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Jodi Lindseth teaches a class that includes McDonald’s employees along with others pursuing Level I Food Service Certificates at AC.

You’ve got to give McDonald’s credit. Amarillo College certainly does.

AC is serving up academic credit to employees of the iconic restaurant chain for what they bring to the table – knowledge gleaned through successful completion of the McDonald’s leadership-training program appropriately called Hamburger University.

In a collaboration as natural as burgers and fries, AC and Panhandle McDonald’s owners have collectively fashioned a means by which Hamburger University alumni can complete Level I Food Service Certificates in short order, and they’re eating it up.

A cohort of McDonald’s managerial employees is enrolled in three evening classes this semester at AC – Supervision, Human Relations and Communications. Because AC has granted them six credit hours for the corporate training they’ve already received, each could emerge with a certificate in May, in the shortest possible timeframe.

Footing the bill is the Dana family, which owns numerous Panhandle-area McDonald’s locations. They established an employee-scholarship fund through the AC Foundation. And while Level I certificates are designed to enhance managerial proficiency and hasten career acceleration, there is an additional aspect through which these students might super-size the experience.

AC credentials are commonly ‘stackable’ or sequential, meaning they can be accumulated and are deemed foundational to subsequent rungs on the academic ladder; students interested in moving on academically can apply the certificate credits they earn toward associate degrees.

“Because the credits are stackable, it really motivates you to want to keep going,” Sylvia Alcozer, a general manager for McDonald’s and AC student, said. “I’m very interested in getting my associate degree. It’s a great opportunity.”

Jodi Lindseth, instructor of management at AC, says McDonald’s is not the only corporate presence in the business management classes she is teaching in a hybrid environment (partly in the classroom and partly online). It is becoming more common, she says, for colleges and universities to grant credit for career experiences and/or corporate training.

“We call it ‘credit by licensure,’ and to it we add courses that largely emphasize soft skills,” Lindseth said. “The people from McDonald’s who come into our program are highly experienced, high-caliber managers, but I believe they will have gained additional skills and knowledge through our program that will prove beneficial to them and to their company.”

AC’s Adult Outreach Services Department, led by Maury Roman-Jordan, originally presented the initiative to qualified employees during a visit to the company’s Amarillo headquarters. They helped several apply to the College before they left the building.

“The enthusiasm was high from the outset,” Roman-Jordan said. “We are extremely grateful to McDonald’s and to the Danas for helping us make this happen. This is the sort of effort in which everyone involved can be a winner.”

March 21, 2016