CHOOSE NJ PROGRAM HELPS STUDENTS BEGIN PROFESSIONAL CAREERS CLOSE TO HOME
While New Jersey colleges and universities are actively building facilities and creating programs to attract and retain students, New Jersey businesses are doing their part, too. Choose New Jersey, though its Smart Students Choose New Jersey program, is helping high-achieving students who choose to advance their education in-state begin their professional careers close to home.
Thirty New Jersey college students who graduated from high schools in Newark and Camden had the opportunity to intern at businesses and non-profits in the Garden State this summer as part of the Smart Students program. Brianna Amos and Katherine Penafiel, interns at PSE&G, were among them.
“Support for New Jersey schools, colleges and the industries that call the state home continues to be important to PSEG,” said Ralph LaRossa, president and Chief Operating Officer of PSEG Power and Chairman of the Board of Directors for Choose New Jersey. “This program gives our brightest and most motivated students a career path with some of the state’s most influential companies. We are proud to be part of a program that likely will keep these students here and contributing to the workforce that gives New Jersey one of its most important competitive advantages.”
Vincent Maione, Atlantic City Electric Region President and Vice Chairman of Choose New Jersey’s Board of Directors, agrees. Smart Students intern and engineering student Angel Espinal spent his summer with a team of engineers at the company’s Glassboro office.
“Access to a highly-educated, skilled workforce is critical to business and New Jersey’s economic growth,” said Maione. “It’s important to give our most valuable resource, our future leaders and innovators, an opportunity to begin their professional careers in New Jersey so we can build the workforce of tomorrow.”
Smart Students Choose New Jersey is a scholarship and internship program supported by Choose New Jersey, Inc., an economic development organization charged with encouraging and nurturing the State’s economic growth, and New Jersey’s forward-thinking business, education and community leaders.