Internships

Internships

Looking for an Internship?

Internships are posted like jobs. Let’s jump into search mode!

Internships are located like job openings (vs a list). Students use their work-search knowledge, skills, and tools to find internship opportunities.

Career Services offers starting points such as familiar internships vetted for legitimacy by faculty and/or Career Services including examples of federal/state positions. Students share their internship/student employment search with their Faculty Mentor and Career Services for support.

Ready to start your search? Share ideas with your Faculty Mentor and check out the historical local/regional intern positions and vetted postings via the Experiential Learning page. While you are there, investigate other ideas on how to gain work-ready experiences through course credits options like practicums, field placement, research, service learning, and work-based learning projects.

Experiential Learning

Internship vs. Externship

Internships:

  • Gain skills from a professional
  • Connected to learning outcomes
  • Semester or summer program
  • Most often hired by the employer
  • May be connected to credits
  • Most often paid

Externships:

  • Gain an overview of a career
  • Observe a workplace
  • Short-term (days or weeks) experience
  • Typically not for credit
  • Usually unpaid

Questions to Consider

Decide on the following questions before you start to look for an internship:

  • What do you want to learn? Is this connected to your academic program and/or specific courses?
  • Are you interested in a specific industry or a specific occupation?
  • Do you have a specific faculty member in mind to connect with or your Faculty Mentor?
  • Identify locations where you may have a lead on housing accommodations.

Part-Time Jobs = Experiential Learning Opportunities

  • Seek employment in an industry and a position connected to your academic program/courses-of-interest
  • Once your job duties are dialed-in, ask for duties connected to your coursework

NACE

NACE research has consistently documented the connection between a paid internship and an increase in the number of job offers. In this survey, results show that those who have done a paid internship receive an average of 1.61 job offers compared to 0.95 job offers for those who have done an unpaid internship and 0.77 job offers for those who have not done an internship at all. For starters, our results revealed this astonishing fact:

Students who use the career center’s help to find an internship are 2.2 times more likely to get a paid internship than an unpaid internship or no internship at all.

Graduating seniors who took part in paid internships are 2.4 times more likely to say their degree is related to the job they ultimately landed—and those who believe their job and degree are related are 3.3 times more likely to say their institution prepared them well for their career.

Is the Position an Internship?

Internships Include:

  1. Position description includes the application of the knowledge gained in your coursework to a real-world employment experience vs. filling a position that a regular employee would routinely perform.
  2. Inclusion of Learning Objectives connected to academic program/course learning outcomes.
  3. A specific beginning and end of employment; short-term usually consistent with the University enrollment schedule.
  4. Direct supervision by an experience professional providing productive documented feedback, guidance, and the resources necessary to complete the position duties

“An internship is a form of experiential learning that integrates knowledge and theory learned in the classroom with practical application and skills development in a professional workplace setting.”

-National Association of Colleges and Employers

EOU-Based Internships

Multiple EOU departments and academic programs offer a student internship experience.

Openings are posted via the EOU Student Jobs.

  1. Community Health Outreach Intern sponsored by the EOU Human and Health Performance Department
  2. LEAP (Lab for Exercise Assessment & Performance) Intern sponsored by the EOU Human and Health Performance Department
  3. MOVE Lab Intern sponsored by the EOU Human and Health Performance Department
  4. Outreach & Engagement Intern sponsored by the EOU Outdoor Adventure Program
  5. Sports Management Intern sponsored by the EOU Athletics Department
See Examples of Student Internship Testimonies