By Damon J. D’Agostino

Chief Commercial Officer, CIT Commercial Air

CIT Group Inc.

Education and Internship Committee Chair

As most of you know, the ISTAT Foundation has been keenly focused over the past year on ensuring that our membership has a full pipeline of skilled and knowledgeable employees to meet the talent needs in the future.

Early next year, the fruits of those efforts will come to several college campuses in the form of a program developed in cooperation with ISTAT member companies. The program will provide students critical skills and knowledge relevant to our industry. Once students complete these courses of study, we feel confident that they will be better prepared to enter the workforce, ready to make an immediate contribution to their employer.

In the immediate term, the Foundation is happy to report that the reactivation of ISTAT’s internship program has generated unprecedented levels of participation – and global reach. 

Those who worked as interns through college know that summer is an opportune time to replenish the bank account in anticipation of extra costs in the academic year to come. ISTAT’s internship program provides students who are accepted with a $2,500 stipend to go toward travel and housing – removing what is often a prohibiting factor for those students trying to balance work experience with financial obligations.

We reactivated the program this year, and intentionally limited the number of participating companies to help ensure that our processes and IT infrastructure are sound. All told, some 43 students from around the world applied. In the end, five students representing three nationalities were placed at four member companies. One intern participant, studying in Australia, will intern at a member company in Hong Kong. Another student is from Canada who will intern in Florida. In both instances, the stipend will make possible what would not have been otherwise given the geographical divides and related costs. It is both thrilling and sad that we had more students than employers, but every position was filled and it shows that there are great students available who can make a contribution to your organization over the summer.

Given that this summer was a "soft launch," we are excited about what will be possible when we extend the program to any interested member company next summer. Believe it or not, most students start working on their summer internship plans in the fall, so it’s not too early to start thinking now about whether your company would be a right fit for the program. We already have twice the number of member companies who have expressed interest, and we have urged all of them to begin outlining workplans for their potential interns. CIT Aerospace is participating in the internship program this summer, and I can already see the benefits of this preparation in helping our intern hit the ground running and at the same time be a productive contributor. If your company doesn’t have a formal internship program in place, one of our committee members would be pleased to work with you to provide tools and a guide to develop one for your organization.

If you’re interested in the internship program going forward or would like assistance in developing a program, please contact me at damon.dagostino@cit.com. I would also love to hear from you if you have any other ideas as to how we might position the ISTAT Foundation’s Education and Internship programs for future success. I want to thank Aviation Capital Group, CIT Aerospace, GECAS and Residco who have already contributed in making this goal a reality. With your help, we are going to do all we can to develop our industry’s next generation of leaders.