THE SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS AND RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMATION (SMART) SCHOLARSHIP FOR SERVICE PROGRAM | W911NF 17 S 0009

Opportunity Information: Apply for W911NF 17 S 0009

The Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service Program is a congressionally established Department of Defense (DoD) workforce pipeline designed to grow and sustain a highly skilled science and engineering talent base for DoD laboratories and related technical organizations. The core idea is straightforward: the program funds students while they earn technical degrees, places them in hands-on DoD research environments during school, and then brings them into the DoD workforce after graduation for a required period of service. By combining financial support, real lab experience, and a guaranteed post-graduation job pathway, SMART aims to strengthen national defense research and development capacity by ensuring DoD has access to trained specialists in priority technical fields.

For students, SMART functions as a scholarship-for-service model. Awardees (undergraduate through graduate level) receive scholarship support that typically covers tuition and provides a stipend, reducing or eliminating the financial barriers that often limit participation in advanced STEM education. While still enrolled, scholars complete summer internships at DoD laboratories, where they work on applied research problems aligned with defense needs and gain early exposure to government R&D culture, security requirements, and mission-driven engineering constraints. After completing their degree, scholars return to a DoD laboratory or sponsoring organization to fulfill an obligated employment commitment. That service obligation is equal to or greater than the total time the student received SMART scholarship funding, tying the investment in education directly to workforce outcomes.

From the government administration perspective, this funding opportunity is not a scholarship application for individual students; it is a cooperative agreement intended to support the operation and administration of the SMART program itself. The awarding agency is the Department of the Army, Materiel Command, and the program is managed at the DoD level by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OASD(R&E)) Research Directorate. Because it is structured as a cooperative agreement, the recipient is expected to work closely with the SMART Program Office, with substantial collaboration and shared responsibilities rather than operating independently.

The opportunity lays out four fundamental elements that the recipient must help execute to ensure the program runs effectively. First, the recipient must cooperatively assist with end-to-end program administration. This includes supporting the scholarship application cycle, maintaining ongoing monitoring and communication with students during their academic programs, tracking scholars after graduation, and monitoring hiring outcomes to ensure scholars transition into their obligated employment roles. Administrative support also explicitly includes website development and maintenance and facilitation activities that may be specific to individual military Services participating in SMART, reflecting that the program spans multiple DoD components with slightly different implementation needs.

Second, the recipient is expected to develop and maintain a SMART Information Management System. This is essentially the program’s data backbone: a system that can track, update, and maintain all SMART program data across the student lifecycle, from application and selection through enrollment, internship placements, graduation, and post-graduation employment. Given the scale and complexity of a scholarship-for-service program, this system is central to compliance, reporting, coordination with laboratories, and ensuring scholars meet program requirements and timelines.

Third, the award calls for a structured annual marketing and outreach plan developed and executed in conjunction with the SMART Program Office. The intent is to sustain a robust applicant pool and ensure awareness across colleges and universities, particularly in the technical disciplines the program targets. Outreach is not treated as a one-off recruitment push; it is framed as an annual plan, implying ongoing engagement with academic institutions, continuous improvement of recruitment strategies, and consistent messaging about eligibility, benefits, internships, and the service commitment.

Fourth, the recipient must assist the SMART Program with financial disbursements on behalf of the government. This includes helping pay scholars’ tuition, stipends, and other authorized expenses. In practical terms, this element emphasizes that smooth, accurate, and timely payments are a critical operational requirement. Scholarship programs can fail students quickly if disbursements are delayed or mishandled, so the grant highlights payment support as a core function alongside administration, data management, and outreach.

In terms of the formal grant listing details, the opportunity is categorized as discretionary and uses a cooperative agreement as the funding instrument, under the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category. The CFDA number associated with the program is 12.631. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning a wide range of applicant organizations may apply, assuming they can meet the operational, technical, and administrative demands described. The opportunity number is W911NF-17-S-0009, with an original closing date of July 11, 2017, and a creation date of May 10, 2017. While the listing does not provide an award ceiling or expected number of awards in the provided text, the scope suggests the recipient would need the capacity to handle program-wide coordination, systems development, outreach execution, and financial processing at a scale consistent with a national DoD scholarship program.

Overall, the SMART Scholarship for Service Program is designed to produce a predictable, high-quality STEM workforce for DoD by funding students in critical technical fields, embedding them in DoD labs through internships, and converting them into post-graduation hires through a service obligation. The grant opportunity summarized here focuses on the operational partner role needed to keep that pipeline running: administering the program, building and maintaining the information system that tracks participants and outcomes, conducting sustained outreach to universities, and supporting the payment processes that deliver the scholarship benefits to students.

• The Dept of the Army -- Materiel Command in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "THE SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS AND RESEARCH FOR TRANSFORMATION (SMART) SCHOLARSHIP FOR SERVICE PROGRAM" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.631.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2017-05-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2017-07-11. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

Apply for W911NF 17 S 0009

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: