Project Spotlight: DoD SMART Scholarship-for-Service Program

LMI recently held its annual Luminary Awards to commemorate the significant accomplishments of our teams and individuals, rewarding Leadership, Mission Focus, and Innovation while advancing our mission with ethics and integrity.

The Paul Ignatius Luminary Award recognizes a top project that provides exceptional value to the client, a flawless deliverable, and sound analysis while enhancing LMI's reputation. This year's Ignatius Luminary is awarded to the LMI Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) team.

This year’s Ignatius Luminary is awarded to the LMI SMART team for their exceptional and unwavering support to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Research and Engineering SMART Scholarship Program Office. The team consists of 40 dedicated LMI employees and is led by Janna Simons, Karen Ale, Gene Burnell, Heather Le Gaux, Tom McConnell, Alexis Schade, and Sarah Turner.

The support delivered by the SMART team resulted in 1,419 scholarships awarded, approximately 900 internships performed, and more than 1,000 scholars hired into DoD civilian employment. The team engaged with over 200 sponsoring facilities and more than 3,500 scholars, from degree pursuit through DoD employment. Their high-performing outreach team created various multimedia products, increased SMART social media following by 1,400%, and reached more than 4,000 individuals from 422 universities, resulting in a 40% increase in started applications between 2018 and 2021.

The SMART team successfully distributed more than $170 million with 100% on-time payments to scholars and universities over the past 50 months. In addition, the innovation implemented in the SMART Information Management System development increased program administration efficiency, reducing document processing time by 44% and making the program scalable for the government's planned program growth.