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SMU Dedman School of Law is on the cutting edge when it comes to educating students about the in-house practice of law. Our Corporate Counsel Externship Program combines a corporate counsel course with externships in corporate legal departments. This past year, we placed over 120 students in 112 different companies, where they gained real world, legal experience under the supervision of seasoned attorneys.

Our placements are specially tailored to match students with companies that fit their practice area or industry focus. For example, we placed a student interested in fashion law at Fossil Group, an engineer at Texas Instruments Incorporated, a student interested in health law at McKesson, and a student interested in venture capital with the Mark Cuban Companies.

The University’s AT&T Data Science Scholars Program (DSSP) annually provides select SMU female students and students from underrepresented communities valuable experience with data science methods and tools while working for a major corporation. DSSP combines an eight-week certification course with a full-time paid summer internship in AT&T’s chief data office, allowing the students opportunities to develop solutions with data-driven insights, AI, machine learning, and automation. Additionally, working with AT&T mentors, the students break down business problems via data analytics and determine improvements, including fleet optimization, energy efficiency, and marketing.

In the AT&T Center for Virtualization, faculty and students across SMU perform interdisciplinary research in fields such as cybersecurity, data science, and machine learning to develop virtual cloud-based devices and machines. The center’s initiatives include understanding and mitigating biases in AI; constructing programmable network infrastructure supporting scalable security, reliability and quality of service; and developing and maintaining cloud security enhancements via machine learning. The center has an affiliates program which provides collaborative research and development opportunities among industry representatives, SMU faculty and students.

In June 2018, the Toyota USA Foundation, SMU’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development, and Dallas ISD formed a partnership to develop a PreK–8th grade STEM-focused school in the Pinkston Feeder Pattern in the West Dallas 75212 ZIP Code area. The partnership provides for an evidence-based, industry-informed STEM curriculum, as well as targeted, community-embedded and co-located wraparound services such as summer and afterschool programming, socio-emotional support for students, food pantry and parenting support for families.

Toyota, Dallas ISD, and SMU Simmons are committed to providing curricula and academic support services that will prepare students for college and the workforce and to establishing a model that can be replicated for the benefit of other schools and communities.

In 1969, through the generosity of Algur H. Meadows, his family and The Meadows Foundation, SMU’s school of the arts was named the Algur H. Meadows School of the Arts. After Algur Meadows made a gift of his Spanish art collection to SMU, it became one of the most significant academic resources of the University and is now considered one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. 

The Meadows name remains the most important in the school’s legacy, and The Meadows Foundation has continued to provide transformational support over the last 40 years.

In 2023, the O’Donnell Foundation committed $30 million to SMU including $15 million to name and endow the O’Donnell Data Science and Research Computing Institute and $15 million to fund the Initiative for Digital Innovation in Engineering and Computer Science at the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering. Funding will go toward endowed faculty positions, seed money for research, technology and hardware, and associate director positions within the institute. The gift is helping to propel forward SMU’s high performance computing ecosystem and usher in a new era of data science research at the University.