2025 RISE Up Partner of the Year

Each year, the NRF Foundation honors a partner who exemplifies an extraordinary collaboration with the use of RISE Up training and credentialling to prepare students to begin a career in retail. Our 2025 Partner of the Year is making waves, taking the learning outside the classroom.  

The College of the Florida Keys offers an inclusive post-secondary education program called Project ACCESS (Accessing Community College Educational experiences, Social experiences, and Skills for careers) that focuses on students with intellectual disabilities and autism, preparing them for the professional world. 

Dr. Nina Medyk teaches many of the classes within the program, centering on courses students take in their first year. She integrated the NRF Foundation RISE Up Retail Industry Fundamentals credential into one of her courses. Read on to discover the ways it has enhanced Medyk’s classroom.

Left to right: Geraldine Darius, Nicole Gerrard, Dr. Nina Medyk

Skills learned with RISE Up 

RISE Up courses touch on many aspects of retail, with the Retail Industry Fundamentals credential covering many basics someone new to retail needs to know. Beyond the core retail skills that students learn, lessons are applicable to everyday life and the skills taught apply to all careers. “Even if some students don’t want to work in retail, customer service skills are transferable to many areas of work,” Medyk says.  

Additionally, the course goes over SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-oriented and Time-based) goals. Many students may not have experience setting their own goals and Medyk says RISE Up helps them “develop their own goals that are from a place they actually care about, with their values, that will be truly meaningful for their lives, and not the goals of … their teacher for example.” 

She says many students are often told what they want, rather than encouraged to create their own goals. “Sometimes it’s a lot easier for adults to [say] ‘do this’ … ‘you’re good at this, go into this field.’” Teaching them how to set SMART goals helps students get in the habit of setting goals on their own.   

Incorporating RISE Up into the classroom and beyond 

Even just by taking the course itself, students learn skills they may never have developed before. “I also teach them study skills with the class,” Medyk says. “Many students have never been taught how to optimize their ability to remember and learn new things, or the differences with passive and active learning..” Her students put their RISE Up workbooks into a binder and Medyk teaches them how to create flash cards, practice tests, stay organized, work with concept associations, and apply what they learn to the real-world using role play and a fake money set.

Medyk prioritizes experiential learning experiences in her classroom and incorporates aspects of the RISE Up curriculum into these experiences for her students. For example, her students go over their workbooks independently and then review vocabulary and certain concepts as a class, often turning review sessions into jeopardy style games. Once Medyk feels the students have a good grasp on their class material, “We practice. We'll go to our bookstore on campus, and we do a scavenger hunt,” she explains. 

Students receive a list of vocabulary terms or other concepts to find in the store; examples include “take a picture of a seasonal merchandising display or upselling” and “take a picture of two competing products.” 

“There’s also some questions for the students to ask the associates at the bookstore relating to RISE Up vocabulary,” Medyk says. Students are encouraged to talk with store employees for information, including “Ask who their primary wholesaler or merchandise distributor is” and “Ask an employee if the store has a loyalty program, what it's like working there, and how you apply.” She then has her students explain what they’ve learned and reflect on the experience during classroom discussions.  

Medyk takes this activity one step further. “Once they finish the bookstore … [we] go over to our local marina by way of our college's boat, and we interview and do the scavenger hunt there,” she says. This allows the students to see the concepts learned in their RISE Up curriculum in action in several different environments and practice their soft skills with different associates. It also allows students to connect with local retailers.  

Medyk says the NRF credential helps students further their careers before they’ve even taken the exam, specifically the elevator pitch section. “[Students] come up with their own elevator pitch,” she says. “We have a career fair at our college … they are practicing networking, and they use that elevator pitch exercise found in the workbook on real employers in our community.”  

In addition to the networking and concept application, students could apply what they learned in a real-world setting and gain real work experience. The college has a food pantry called Tuga Shelves, and students had the opportunity to stock the pantry and take care of expired items. “I gave a list of vocabulary words to the person in charge of running Tuga Shelves,” Medyk says, “and then the students went over and were able to, in real context, use those terms for inventory-related things.” 

The impact 

Students taking the RISE Up course at the College of Florida Keys gain a lot from the course, including knowledge, skills and marketability. What’s more, they gain “a feeling of accomplishment,” Medyk says. “The whole semester … they’ve been studying hard, following the study cycle we teach about, applying their skills and then they take a hard exam with a tangible credit… the thing that they love most is having the knowledge that they can pass an exam and earn a meaningful certificate that they can add to their resume and market during their job hunts.” 

Students have this feeling of “maybe college is for me. Maybe I can do this.” Medyk says.  

RISE Up is the NRF Foundation training and credentialing program that provides foundational employability skills to help people land jobs and get promoted in retail and beyond. 

Our curriculum and exams are industry-recognized and were developed in collaboration with more than 20 retailers, including Walmart, Macy’s, The Home Depot, Burlington Stores, BJ’s Wholesale Club and Nordstrom. And we’re proud to partner with more than 3,000 training partners across the country. 

About NRF Foundation Honors

The NRF Foundation connects people to an industry that's a great place to start and a great place to grow. Since 2015, the NRF Foundation Honors has raised the funds to continue to provide programs and resources to help people build better lives and stronger communities.

Join us in New York City to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the NRF Foundation Honors and be a part of the story of how retail builds extraordinary careers.