Education

Sam’s Club is celebrating National Small Business Week in a very big way.

The retailer is launching the Small Business Economic Mobility initiative (SBEM), a five-year investment in small business growth through increased access to capital and borrower education, with grants totaling $13.6 million to eight national nonprofits.

Staples is donating the tools and resources necessary to make graduation happen for thousands of students across the country -- and throwing in a little Taylor Swift to boot.

Staples and Office Depot are celebrating National Teacher Appreciation Week with big savings for educators.

The consumer electronics industry has reached a new milestone: It recycled 660 million pounds of used electronics products last year.

The number is the CE industry’s highest ever annual total, and the U.S. is now recycling CE products in record numbers, according to the Fourth Annual Report of the eCycling Leadership Initiative, led by the Consumer Electronics Association.

Chain Store Age traveled west to Las Vegas for its 51st annual SPECS conference, which was held at the Sands Expo at the Venetian/Palazzo.

Florida’s first transit-oriented development opens fall 2016

It may be hard to imagine that the home to one of the largest public universities in the United States is somewhat undersung. But that’s exactly what the developers of the 1 million-sq.-ft.

Walmart is schooling students in Virginia on savings with the latest iteration of its on campus concept store first introduced in 2011.

The new 4,100-sq.-ft. Walmart on Campus is located at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The store opened April 29 and is part of an ongoing pilot program at Walmart to designed to provide VCU students and faculty, as well as the surrounding neighborhood, more convenient access to affordable products.

By Steve Backman and Jeff Übl

In Bismarck, North Dakota, where a regional boom associated with the nearby Bakken Formation has made the state second only to Texas in terms of U.S. oil production, commercial development is on the rise. The missing piece of the puzzle for the city, however, has been the conspicuous absence of a defining downtown mixed-use destination: the kind of a social, civic, financial, and experiential cornerstone that gives residents and visitors somewhere to live, work, play and stay.