Mission:

The Bay Area Retail Leadership Center consists of a multilateral partnership between SJSU students, retail industry partners, and SJSU faculty, administration, and staff.  A program of Center-sponsored events brings constituents together in an effort to provide co-curricular, experiential learning opportunities designed to build students’ leadership skills as well as their awareness and knowledge about retailing as a career destination.

Purpose:

In the greater San Jose metropolitan area, the retailing industry operates in the shadow of the high tech industry.It is surprising how little some students know about career opportunities in retailing.Retail management has become highly data-driven, technology-reliant, and talent-reliant. Professionalism in the industry has substantially escalated and high-leverage, high-paying career opportunities abound. BARC is designed to apprise students of these opportunities, to provide abundant experiences that complement classroom learning, and, finally, to enhance students' chances of securing challenging and rewarding internships and careers in retailing

Student Benefits:

• Interface with leaders from retailing and allied industries.
  
  
• These leadership encounters offer an experiential learning complement to the classroom experience.
  
  
• The encounters provide essential socialization opportunities, particularly to the many SJSU students who are the first from their families to attend an institution of higher learning.
  
  
• The encounters provide students with excellent networking opportunities as they begin to build their careers.

Company Benefits:

• Elevate awareness of and knowledge about retailing among students, making retailing a high-profile career destination.
  
  
• Provide high quality interfacing opportunities between BARC Executive Board partners and SJSU students.
  
  
• Provide Executive Board partners with enhanced access to the best talent that the College of Business and university as a whole can provide.
  
  
• With a highly diverse, multi-ethnic student population of 32,000 on campus, (6,000 in the College of Business), provide opportunity for companies to target key ethnic groups.