Retail Advisory Board
Advancing and disseminating business knowledge and encouraging innovation is retail is an important part of the mission of the Walton College. To make an impact in this area, the Retail Advisory Board provides us with the opportunity for engagement and support from industry partners. Members provide input, connections, and financial support to retail-related programs and initiatives to ensure growth and advancement of the Walton College’s strategic endeavor of retail.
Below are four current initiatives in which the Retail Advisory Board supports the Walton College.
Research
Fulfilling the Walton College mission includes ensuring advancement of business knowledge. Participation in the Retail Advisory Board offers collaboration between industry professionals and the collegiate community. Whether at biannual board meetings where latest trends and retail topics are discussed, or at retail-related conferences and events that members both help plan and attend, continuous learning takes place for both practitioners and academics.
Career Readiness
Experiential learning allows students to connect knowledge to practice, and the Walton College seeks to provide students with these types of opportunities. Retail Competitions and associated classroom prep on topics such as line reviews, forecasting, pricing, and visual merchandise are developed and executed by the Retail Advisory Board. Members also participate in guest speaking, panels, projects, and store walks to enhance student professional development.
McMillon Innovation Studio
The Walton College seeks to create leaders who will shape the future of retail. To help accomplish this, the Retail Advisory Board supports the objectives of the McMillon Innovation Studio. Here, students and organizational partners are exposed to design thinking and product management methodologies to solve human-centered problems. Design teams reframe problems with a high value on customer empathy and further ideate, prototype, and test solutions that address challenges in a variety of fields including healthcare, supply-chain, logistics, and consumer goods.
Curriculum
The Walton College continually seeks to innovate its curriculum in a way that uniquely prepares undergraduate and graduate students for careers in the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries. Retail Advisory Board members are critical to this effort. Guided by their expertise, curriculum and classroom content is revised regularly to give retail-focused students the most relevant experience possible, leading them to promising careers in the retail sector.