Internships

An internship is a temporary employment where your duties and responsibilities are directly related to your major field of study.

Our department offers two courses for earning credit for internships: CS411 for general computer science internship credit, and SE411 (pending approval) for software engineering internships. The following table describes the requirements and process for selecting and completing an internship.

Internships are usually either 10-20 hours per week during the Fall or Spring semester, or full-time for the summer. Summer internships do not have to be done locally.

Computer science & software engineering interns are normally paid, but this is not required. Some students choose to do an internship in another country, and in this case payment is not normally possible due to visa restrictions.

	CS411	SE411
Eligibility Requirements	junior or senior standing, or permission of the department	SE361, SE461, and one of SE462, CS382, or CS383
Beginning an Internship	Obtain an internship or part-time position with a local company. (We post available internships via e-mail and on the bulletin boards around the department.) Submit a brief written description of the company, a description of your job and your responsibilities, a description of the project you will work on if appropriate, the name of your supervisor, and a timeline to a faculty advisor for approval.
Evaluation	About half-way through the internship, submit a short status report to the faculty advisor. (Your faculty advisor will set a due date.) This report can be just a few sentences, and should describe the current situation with the project or describe how the internship is going. The student and supervisor should both sign and date this report. Upon completion of the internship, the student should submit a report describing in some detail what was accomplished and what the student learned as a result. This can include new technical skills as well as knowledge of corporate politics, etc. There should also be a section in the final report for the supervisor to make comments. Again, the student and supervisor should both sign and date this report. These two reports form the basis for assigning a grade. Also after the internship is complete, give a brief oral report to your faculty advisor.
Evaluation	We often ask students to share their internship experiences with the department through an informal presentation.	A professional final departmental presentation, to be arranged with the help of your faculty advisor, is required.
Eligible Companies	Any company with staff dedicated to computing.	Any company with an IT department or a software consulting company.
Project Types	Any computer science related jobs, including database, networking, web development, programming, etc.	The job must involve the development of a software system.