Jetrader - November/December 2008 - 11

The way that the scholarship process works is that the
Foundation Scholarship Committee
asks each selected aviation school to
submit its best scholarship candidate for
consideration. Then it chooses from the applicant
pool based primarily on achievement and need.
The Foundation program's scholarship dollars beneﬁt
grade-school through graduate-school students around the
globe. We also look for as much diversiﬁcation as we can among
the various categories of aviation career paths, such as the various
pilot groups, airline and airport management sectors, aeronautical
engineering, etc. We are ﬁnding that our scholarships are not only
helping these students pay for tuition but have helped them in many
ways redeﬁne their own career paths. We hope that many will wind

up being future ISTAT members. Also, with ISTAT staff
member Dana Henninger's assistance, an alumni group has
been established among the awardees where they can keep in
touch with each other as their careers progress.
Thanks for your continued support of the ISTAT Foundation
and its scholarship program. I look forward to an equally
outstanding 2009. In closing, I'd like to leave you with a note
from grant and scholorship recipient New Castle Aviation (U.K.)
to ISTAT Foundation Vice Chairman Bob Brown:
"Dear Bob: I would like to personally thank you for allowing
us to attend the ISTAT Conference and for all the ﬁnancial
assistance given to us by the ISTAT Foundation. The $5,000 we
received will enhance the provision of training and allow us to
purchase training videos and some classroom equipment, which
will allow interactive questioning in class. We also intend to
purchase a laptop for the academy staff to use on school visits
as part of our participation scheme. This is aimed at encouraging
youngsters into aviation from as young as seven years old. I must
thank Dana Henninger and Ron Pietrzak of ISTAT for ensuring
we had a memorable visit, and the biggest thank you goes to
Chris Partridge, without whom we would not have been aware of
ISTAT."

Name: Tim Billon
Scholarship Awarded: 2007
College: Embry Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU)
Graduation: December 2008
Major: Aeronautical Science with a minor in Meteorology
Current Job: Third-year ﬂight instructor at ERAU

How did receiving the ISTAT Foundation scholarship affect your life
and career?
The ISTAT scholarship greatly helped me achieve my goals at Embry-Riddle. As
everyone in aviation knows, ﬂying is expensive and building ﬂight hours takes a lot of
time and money. The scholarship I received from ISTAT allowed me to continue my ﬂight
training at school instead of stopping for ﬁnancial reasons. I was then able to pursue a
job at the school as a ﬂight instructor and have loved it ever since. It is truly a rewarding
experience to take someone who has never ﬂown before all the way up to their ﬁrst solo
and see their extreme joy on their faces afterwards. Flight instructing will also get me
the experience needed in the corporate/airline industry for the future. I could not have
gotten to this point without the generous support of the ISTAT foundation, and I am
truly thankful for it!

What did you learn from attending the ISTAT Annual Conference?

Tim Billon

By attending the conference in Arizona, I was able to observe an aspect of the aviation
world that many don't ever get to see. It was amazing to hear the great speakers talking
about the current state of the industry and also what they believed the future would hold
for aviation. It was also a great privilege to talk to these people one-on-one during some
of the informal gatherings, as well as making great contacts for the future.
Jetrader 11

Jetrader - November/December 2008

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