Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded junior Courtney Beckham with the DoD SMART Scholarship, securing funding for her tuition for her final two years of school and a job for her first two years after graduation. It also means she receives an annual stipend and an 8–12-week internship with her sponsoring facility next summer.

“I’ll be getting a feel for the workplace and the type of job I’ll have upon graduation,” says Beckham, a math major in the Honors College, whose sponsoring facility is the Defense Intelligence Agency. “It will help me prepare not only for my job in the future, but also going into my senior year to determine what area of mathematics I want to hone in on, and to help me figure out any specific classes I might want to take that are more advantageous to the field that I’ll be going into.”

The DoD SMART Scholarship is awarded to graduate and undergraduate students in STEM fields with the goal of increasing civilian participation within the DoD.