Distance Ed

Texas School Issues Scholarships to Vets for Online Courses

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/11/17

A Texas university has joined up with an online course company to hand out access to courses to American veterans and their spouses. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi is working with ed2go, a Cengage Learning company, to fulfill a Joining Forces commitment. Joining Forces is a White House initiative launched five years ago, calling on Americans to rally around service members and their families in the areas of wellness, education and employment. Last year Cengage committed to handing out 100 scholarships to military recipients and partners as part of the program.

The community in which the university operates has a sizable population of active and retired military personnel. Under the new arrangement, it will work with ed2go to identify possible recipients for the "full-ride" scholarships. So far, according to the company, seven non-active duty students have received aid intended to advance their work at A&M-Corpus Christi.

"As a veteran, I understand the hardship of furthering my education when having to change duty stations more than once," said Danell Reilly, lead for the career and professional education in the university's Office of Community Outreach. "Joining Forces provides an incredible opportunity to provide more military families a higher education and professional credentials using the best online career development and training opportunities to support portable career goals."

The courses provided with ed2go cover career training available through institutions of higher education, including Rutgers, George Mason University and Maricopa Community Colleges, as well as companies, such as the Home Depot and Walmart.

An application for the A&M scholarship program is available on the ed2go website here.