International Students and Professionals Aerospace at Georgia Tech (ISPA@GT) is a registered student organization at Georgia Tech. The purpose of ISPA@GT is to:
- Share knowledge on opportunities for international students in the aerospace field
- Advocate for solutions to issues faced by international students in aerospace at Georgia Tech, such as:
- Providing Aerospace career development support
- Creating new opportunities through more targeted GT corporate outreach
- Creating an international Aerospace community through the ISPA@GT student organization
- Removing barriers to participation in Aerospace research
About
International engineering students at American universities seeking to enter the STEM field face many challenges. According to the National Science Foundation, about 77% of all international students in the US want to stay and work after school, but only about 46% are actually able to do so (source), mainly due to visa sponsorship challenges. U.S. export control laws grant all US Persons automatic access to “sensitive technologies” (regardless of their intended end use), while requiring all non-US persons to obtain a deemed export license before being granted access. Due to a lack of knowledge on how to navigate these regulations, there is a general aerospace industry-wide unwillingness to hire foreign nationals. Unfortunately, the aerospace industry’s export control issue compounds the visa sponsorship issue for International Aerospace Students (IAS).
These issues can be compounded by the Georgia Tech university experience where (1) there is no specific career development support for IASs, and (2) certain barriers exist that can prevent international students from accessing practical research experience on campus due to an incorrect understanding of export control licensing. Certain aerospace disciplines are much more “export controlled” (propulsion/spacecraft/launch) than others (aircraft/helicopters). Many GT IASs interested in these “controlled” disciplines will try and fail to gain practical experience during their time at GT, and resort to gaining experience in adjacent or even non-aerospace STEM disciplines, which may not adequately prepare them for their desired careers. This results in many IASs graduating and either (a) finding a company in an adjacent or non-aerospace field to sponsor a work VISA so that they can stay in the US, or (b) returning to their home country (which often does not have an aerospace industry). It remains rare for an IAS interested in a “controlled” discipline to end up with a US job in that discipline after their time at university.
Despite these challenges, success in the US aerospace industry for IASs is attainable with exceptional perseverance, non-stop networking, and some luck. Our team’s goal is to empower more GT IASs – which make up 10% of the undergraduate and 40% of the graduate AE student populations – to achieve success and thrive in the most advanced and exciting aerospace industry in the world.
Please visit our Projects page to learn more about our efforts.