Internship Resources

Appropriate professional opportunities can be found in virtually any type of professional environment: a small or large firm; a manufacturing or service company; a for-profit or nonprofit organization; a private, public, or government entity. Professional work experience can be paid or volunteer; part-time or full-time; virtual or office settings; completed during the academic year or during summer break. The internship experience must fulfill the following criteria:

• The student must complete a minimum of 135 hours in a managed environment where the student directly reports to a supervisor and is able to learn more about business via interaction and delegated responsibility. NOTE: hours worked prior to application submission are considered retro hours and are NOT COUNTED in the 135 minimum hours.
• It is University policy that family member internships are to be supervised by someone other than family, who can be unbiased, during the internship.
• It must involve professional duties that allow the student leadership opportunities, the ability to use creativity to improve processes, professional interaction and the opportunity to contribute to the success of the organization.
• The student should be applying knowledge and skills learned in class to further company objectives in a learning environment.
• The student is required to complete all course assignments by the end of the semester. 
• The student and employer are required to fill out an evaluation regarding the experience once the internship is complete or by finals week of the semester in which enrolled. Evaluation forms come via an electronic link to both the student and employer once the student has indicated completion of the required 135 hours.
• Internship dates should fall between the (fall, spring or summer) academic semester enrolled.

Students are required to seek pre-approval of the internship work to be performed prior to or at the beginning of the internship worked. If you are unsure if you meet these qualifications or have specific questions on this content, contact Mr. Logan Vess by phone at 216-397-4433 or by email at lvess@jcu.edu with your questions or to make an appointment.

To do so, the student must:

• Complete the Professional Experience Form before the start date of or at the beginning of the internship experience.
• Internships require a minimum of 135 hours, which must take place between the fall, spring, or summer academic semester dates that the application is submitted.
• Provide a comprehensive job description that should reflect at least 70% professional experience, and no more than 30% manual labor and/or menial tasks. This means to print out the official job posting you applied to -OR- print to PDF to save to your computer to upload the file. If you must, you can always ask the employer for an official job description as a last resort. DO NOT send your job offer email or letter with this application; job offers are different and are not accepted.
• Compose in your own words three specific and measurable professional job responsibilities while completing the experience. Personal goals are not accepted. Learning objective instructions are listed below on how to write professional learning objectives.
• Resume submitted during the internship application process.
• All documents will be uploaded electronically using acceptable file types: doc, docx, or pdf files. These are the only file formats we can open. 

Please identify three specific tasks for professional learning objectives, describing the project or task to be completed, how it will be accomplished, and how it will be evaluated. Please highlight leadership opportunities and special projects.  These objectives should reflect work that you would include on your resume and be results orientated and specific. These will be transferred to your post resume to tell the next employer what duties you performed on this job that would interest them.

It is also helpful to review the job posting or job description for the responsibilities you will be completing. Please bullet point three professional (not personal) job responsibilities, 1-2 sentences in length for each bullet point, that relates to a task or a specific project working on during this internship. Do not list soft skills such as communication, teamwork, time management, etc. or general statements involving industry processes. Be very specific as these three sentences will be transferred to your post resume, which will let the next employer will know what you did on this job to be an asset to them!

If you are still having trouble writing these out, make an appointment with Nicki Grimes at ngrimes@jcu.edu.

Submit internship approval application here.