Janae Jordan’s career path has been like a ride on a spaceship – meteoric with a seemingly-scripted course.

As a child, she loved building Ikea furniture and playing with LEGOs, which led her to take engineering classes at Lakeside Junior High. That led to studying robotics and a seventh-grade trip to the Duke Talent Identification Program. The only courses available at Duke were aerospace engineering, so her future continued to be narrowly refined.

Now a freshman at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach,

Jordan was one of a handful of students in the country to earn the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship.

The honor comes with paid internships at industry-leading firms, professional mentoring and grants of as much as $2,000. For the third consecutive year, Embry-Riddle had the most students selected for this award of any university in the country.

“When I was at Duke TIP, I took the (aerospace engineering) class and it was fun,” the Fleming Island High graduate said. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. That’s when I thought maybe this is what I want to do with my career. That’s how it all happened.”

The fellowship is offered to Black students as a “commitment to help African-Americans around the world to get their foot in the door,” Jordan said. It recognizes students based on excellence in academics, creativity, ingenuity and serving others to help promote diversity in the aerospace sector, including in engineering, science, policy and more.

“We are delighted to continue to find excited, driven and talented students that want to bring Black excellence into aerospace,” said Tiffany Russell Lockett, cofounder of the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship. “Our goal is always to bring the best students forward for our host companies to consider, and this is the most competitive class to date. With the highest number of applicants ever, we are excited to see where this class goes and how we will continue to make an impact in the future.”

The annual fellowship is given to 31 students a year.

For Jordan, it was another step in a complicated life. Her mother died of a brain tumor when she was 11. Her academic records were lost when her school closed, which forced her to retake all of her placement exams. Suddenly she was a year behind her classmates.

“However, this gave me the motivation to catch up in any way possible,” she said.

To catch up, Jordan took dual classes that got her back on track with the rest of her class and helped her earn college credits. Her success in those courses led to scholarships and, eventually, to acceptance into Embry-Riddle.

After graduation, Jordan hopes to work in the design and manufacturing of rockets or planes.

Now majoring in Aerospace Engineering, Jordan will do her internship at BryceTech in Alexandria, Virginia.

“We couldn’t be prouder of our students chosen for this prestigious award,” said Russell Griffin, Embry-Riddle’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. “These Patti Grace Smith Fellowship winners exemplify how Embry-Riddle’s deep focus on readiness for aerospace engagement extends to all our students, making them standouts to and for the industry.”