Tristan Goodell, a member of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts Class of 2021, has been selected to receive the Department of Defense Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship.
SMART is a federal scholarship-for-service program intended to train and retain civilian scientists and mathematicians in critical STEM fields to support the national security mission of the Defense Department and meet defense technological challenges.
The program is a one-for-one commitment that pays for all tuition and fees for any accredited American university. For every year of degree funding up to a maximum of five years, the scholar commits to working for a year with the DoD as a civilian employee. Scholarship awardees also may serve in summer internships at a DoD facility that prepare the scholars for full-time employment and get them accustomed to working with the department, according to the scholarship program’s website. Scholars also receive a stipend of $25,000 a year as well as health insurance.
Goodell said he discovered the SMART program while researching potential scholarships for which he could apply. His uncle recommended he check out scholarship-for-service opportunities. He found a similar program called CyberCorps Scholarship for Service, but it was a three-year program at only a select number of schools. When his continued research led him to the SMART program, he wasn’t sure if he would qualify.
“Reading the requirements for SMART, I thought I was barely qualified,” Goodell of Maumelle said. “Normally, SMART applicants are freshmen or sophomores in university. However, after asking SMART if I could get by with my (University of Arkansas at Fort Smith) transcript, I decided to apply.”
Goodell said the credit hours he earned at UAFS through concurrent credit courses at ASMSA was the key to his application because SMART requires a college transcript. “With my 57 credit hours, I was on a level playing field with other applicants. I would not have been able to apply to SMART without attending ASMSA,” Goodell said. He said only 13 percent of the students who apply earn the SMART scholarship.
The application process included choosing three desired DoD sponsor facilities where he would intern and work after graduation. He also had to write essays explaining why he loved computer science and desired to work in that field at a DoD facility.
He found out in early February that he was a semifinalist for the scholarship. For two months after that, he received no further news until he received a notice that he had been selected for the scholarship and that his sponsor facility would be the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. The center is DoD’s primary source for foreign air and space threat analysis located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
“I was ecstatic! I knew that SMART would set me on the path to success,” Goodell said.
The SMART program will allow Goodell to attend the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He said the university’s computer science program is ranked as the eighth best computer science program in the world and often recognized as a trailblazer for computer science.
For more information the program, visit www.smartscholarship.org.