AUSTIN (KXAN) — It just became easier for women living in Texas to prepare to run for elected office.

Any Texas woman who enrolls in the next cohort of the LBJ Women’s Campaign School, a training program at the University of Texas at Austin for potential candidates and campaign managers, will now be able to attend for free.

Amy Kroll, the founder and executive director of the LBJ Women’s Campaign School, said the Texas Woman’s University Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy will provide full tuition scholarships, meaning the third cohort will be free for Texans. The grants total $87,500 and will cover the cost for 50 applicants to attend.

“This will help to knock down socioeconomic barriers for women in politics, which is especially important during the ‘she-cession’ caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kroll wrote in an email.

Additionally, the deadline to apply for the campaign school is now Jan. 23 — a week later than initially set. Kroll said the extension happened because of these new tuition grants. Information about how to apply for the LBJ Women’s Campaign School can be found here.

The campaign school launched in 2020 with its first cohort, which included 50 women from across the United States. A year later, 70 more women enrolled in the program. Of the 120 graduates, 11 women have now launched campaigns of their own in Texas, Arkansas and Maryland.

The next session of the LBJ Women’s Campaign School will begin on April 29 and last for about eight months.

The campaign school’s curriculum centers around different campaigns skills. Those include everything from fundraising and talking to the media to grassroots organizing and stakeholder engagement.

“Every possible campaign skill that you can think of, we are covering as part of our curriculum,” Kroll previously told KXAN, “so that the women feel really confident when they do enter the political arena, that they’ve at least had some exposure to every type of political campaigning.”