Internship opportunities at Southeast Missouri State University are opening doors for students to put their learning into action—and Deepshikha Karki is proof. A junior actuarial science major, Karki spent her summer at F&G Annuities & Life in Des Moines, Iowa, applying skills she sharpened in SEMO classrooms to real-world challenges.
Originally from Kathmandu, Nepal, Karki joined the company’s Pension Risk Transfer team, where she built a StatReserve Validation Template, a tool that automates a previously manual process, saving time and improving accuracy. She also analyzed national data from the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association (LIMRA), providing insights that helped F&G evaluate market trends and product performance.
“Connecting what I have learned in the classroom to real-world actuarial practice has been incredibly rewarding,” Karki said. “SEMO prepared me to understand how interest rates and survival probabilities affect annuity valuations, and this has been essential for my internship.”
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Her coursework in topics like the time value of money and mortality modeling directly informed her ability to succeed on the job. Faculty mentorship, hands-on projects and rigorous academic training gave her the confidence to contribute meaningful solutions, before even graduating.
Deepshikha’s story reflects the core of SEMO’s hands-on learning philosophy: preparing students to step into the professional world with both the knowledge and the experience to make an immediate impact.
Actuarial science combines math, statistics, finance and economics to assess risk, especially in insurance and finance. While many graduates work in insurance, some SEMO alumni have gone on to careers at the New York Stock Exchange. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, entry-level actuaries earned an average of more than $125,000 in May 2024, with a job outlook projected to grow 22% from 2023–2033.
Start your own SEMO story. Learn more about the actuarial science program at semo.edu/actuarial-science.