University of Louisville College of Business Students can Apply through Aug. 19
The Board of Advisors for the Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence has set up a fund for financial aid to students studying franchising at the University of Louisville’s College of Business. The Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence, a specialized business education program within the business school, launched this spring. Its overriding aims are to create and sustain generational wealth through franchising and to open up entrepreneurial opportunities for historically underrepresented populations.
In accordance with its goals, these Board of Advisors scholarships give preference to applicants from underrepresented populations. Here are the three types of scholarships available through this new program:
- A Graduate Scholarship Award of up to $3,000, which will assist students enrolled in the Online Franchise Management Certificate program for the 2022-23 academic year. Courses include FRAN 601, FRAN 610, FRAN 620, FRAN 630, FRAN 640 and FRAN 650. Applicants need a 3.0 or higher grade-point average and must be currently enrolled in the College of Business at the University of Louisville.
- Undergraduate Scholarship Award of $1,500 for students in the Undergraduate Franchise Program, 2022-23. Courses include MGMT 409, MGMT 410 or MGMT 413. Students, who must be enrolled in the school’s College of Business, need to have at least a 2.8 GPA.
- Executive Education (Bootcamp) Scholarship Opportunities, a $2,400 award for people enrolled in the Six-Week Online Franchise Management Certificate Bootcamp.
Application deadline: 11:59 p.m. ET, Friday, Aug. 19. You can find complete details about each scholarship and apply here.
More About the Yum! Center
The Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence has been created to build a scalable program that will educate and support entrepreneurs as well as advance the franchise industry as a whole. Its courses will cover the franchise business model across all types of industries.
In addition, the Yum! Center will actively recruit underrepresented students, particularly women and racially diverse students, to its undergraduate-, graduate- and executive-level programs. It will conduct research on franchise ownership via case studies, white papers and other academic endeavors to analyze why franchisee populations aren’t made up of more women and people of color. And the Yum! Center will establish a journal and develop and air podcasts as vehicles for disseminating news to franchisees and franchise managers.
Yum! Brands’ Partnership with University of Louisville
Yum! Brands Inc.’s financial support for and its establishment of the Yum! Center is part of the corporation’s global Unlocking Opportunity Initiative of 2020, a commitment of $100 million over five years. University of Louisville President Neeli Bendapudi welcomed the Yum! Center as a way to “help people everywhere, particularly underrepresented people of color and women, succeed in franchise ownership and management. … It aligns with UofL’s commitment to empowering our communities and supports our vision to become the nation’s premier anti-racist metropolitan research university.”
The Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence expands on the Kentucky university’s franchising education tracks within the College of Business, which include a graduate program and an executive-level Franchise Management Certificate. An undergraduate franchising track in the school’s Bachelor of Business Administration program launched in spring 2021. In conjunction with its Master of Business Administration program, the University of Louisville offers an online franchise management certificate.
Yum! Brands Inc., which has headquarters in Louisville, is composed of 50,000-plus restaurants in more than 150 countries and territories; it has more than 2,000 franchisees. The company’s highest-profile brands are KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Yum! Brands made the 2021 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index and in 2020 the corporation was named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North.
Other Specialized Franchise Learning
The Yum! Center for Global Franchise Excellence at the University of Louisville is one of many new and/or niche education and training opportunities for people who want to drill down into franchising. These include Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Titus Center for Franchising in West Palm Beach, Fla.; the Tariq Farid Franchise Institute at Babson College in Babson Park, Md.; Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies in Washington, D.C.; Northwood University in Midland, Mich.; the Liniger Center on Franchising at the University of Denver; and the International Franchise Professionals Group (IFPG) Certified Franchise Consultant (CFC)Training Program.