Smart Students Choose New Jersey

Newark’s top high school students who choose New Jersey colleges to receive scholarships and internships

January 5, 2016 | By Brick City Live Staff

Choose New Jersey, a company whose stated mission is “to encourage and nurture economic growth throughout New Jersey, with a focus on our urban centers” today launched a scholarship and internship program to recognize top students in Newark who choose to attend an institute of higher learning in their home state.

The pilot program for Smart Students Choose New Jersey will reward the highest academically ranked graduating senior at each of Newark’s 33 public, private and charter high schools who choose to attend a New Jersey college or university. The program will offer a one-time scholarship of $2,000 and a paid summer internship opportunity each year over three years. The program was launched today at the headquarters of its Newark lead corporate sponsor, Audible, Inc.

A subsidiary of Amazon.com, Audible is the world’s largest producer and seller of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word content.

“The Choose New Jersey scholarship program will support our efforts to create improved college and career opportunities for Newark’s future leaders and innovators,” said Christopher Cerf, Superintendent of Newark Public Schools.

The pilot program is being launched in response to statistics showing that annually, nearly 35,000 of New Jersey’s high school graduates leave New Jersey for their college education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition, research shows that students offered paid internships had the highest job offer rate post-graduation.

“Access to top talent is critical to our businesses and the economic vitality of the City of Newark,” said Mayor Ras Baraka. “The Smart Students program is a win/win for our City. It will give Newark’s high achieving students the opportunity to build successful careers close to home, and will help ensure our companies have access to top talent in the future,” he continued.

Ralph LaRossa, president and chief operating officer of PSE&G, and chairman of Choose New Jersey, echoed the programs benefits to area companies. “New Jersey’s highly educated workforce is one of its competitive advantages” he said. “We need to do everything we can to encourage our best and brightest to stay.”

Smart Students Choose New Jersey will offer students the opportunity to work at top businesses and organizations from around the state, including Fortune 500 companies, labor organizations, and small businesses that range across a variety of industries and sectors. The internships will be offered for three consecutive summers, after students’ freshman, sophomore, and junior years. The students will have the choice of remaining at the same company for all three years, or working at three different companies each summer.

The program will be implemented and managed by the Choose New Jersey staff, and lessons learned in this first pilot year will be applied to subsequent cohorts. The program, open to public, parochial and charter schools, will also be offered in the 11 eligible schools in tCamden. The program’s 44 scholars will be announced in June 2016.

For more information about the Smart Students Choose New Jersey scholarship and internship program, visit www.choosenj.com/smart.

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Choose New Jersey partners with businesses to keep students in state

Andrew Sheldon | NJ BIZ | Email the author | Follow on Twitter
By Andrew Sheldon, January 5, 2016 at 2:18 PM

At an event Tuesday at Audible’s headquarters in Newark, Choose New Jersey announced the launch of pilot programs for its new Smart Students initiative.

The program aims to address the issue of students that leave the state to pursue their further education, an occurrence that happens with New Jersey students at nearly twice the rate of the national average, or close to 35,000 students each year.

The program, launched Tuesday morning in Newark and later in the day in Camden, will incentivize top-performing students by offering the best youths from 44 schools who choose to attend a New Jersey college a one-time $2,000 scholarship and paid summer jobs at participating businesses for the three summers after their freshman, sophomore and junior years.

More than half of internships turn into jobs for the interns, according to Choose New Jersey.

Participating businesses include Audible, Public Service Enterprise Group, Atlantic City Electric, PNC Bank, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Hackensack University Health Network, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and others.

At the event Tuesday morning, Choose New Jersey CEO and President Michele Brown said, “That loss of the best and the brightest is completely antithetical to our mission at Choose New Jersey.”

She added: “Anything we can do as an organization to keep our talent here is good for our future (and) businesses.”

View the story on www.njbiz.com.