Coordinator:Joe Hornik
Contact: Internship@cis.gvsu.edu
BACKGROUND:
All CIS students who are governed by the 1998/1999 (and later) catalogs are required to complete
an Internship.
Objectives of the CIS Internship Program:
-
To enable students to gain valuable practical experience
related to their academic field and to enhance their opportunity for employment
upon graduation.
-
To enable an employer to maintain closer liaison with the
Department and the University and to evaluate and train student interns
as prospective full-time employees.
-
To provide the CIS Department with a source of input on
the current problems and needs of business and industry.
Catalog Description:
CS 490 Internship: Internship in a computing situation
with individual faculty supervision to allow students to apply academic
knowledge to actual and professional experience. A minimum of 16
hours of actual field work per week under the supervision of a
work supervisor is required. Graded credit/no credit. Prerequisites:
Junior status, 2.0 overall GPA, 2.0 GPA in major. Variable credit (2 to
5 credits). Offered every semester.
In addition to the above course description in the GVSU
catalog, the Undergraduate Academic Policies and Regulations section
of the catalog specifies that an Internship is experiential learning for credit
taking place outside the classroom and directed by a field supervisor and a Grand
Valley State University faculty member. A student may enroll up to a maximum
of 15 credits of Internships.
An Internship must be planned the semester before it takes place.
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- Satisfy the prerequisites
- Find an acceptable Internship position
- Complete the registration paperwork
- Meet with the Internship coordinator during the semester preceding the start of the Internship.
- Start the work at your employer's site.
- Write and send the following deliverables on time:
- Your supervisor sends a Site Supervisor Evaluation of Intern Report
- Get a grade for CS 490
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Prerequisites:
The prerequisites for CS 490 are:
- Junior status.
- A 2.0 overall GPA.
- A 2.0 GPA in major.
Finding an Acceptable Internship Position:
Work that Qualifies for the Internship:
One of the objectives of the internship program is to
enable students to gain valuable practical experience related to their
academic field and to enhance their opportunity for employment upon graduation
or for acceptance in to a graduate program. In order to meet the objectives
and maintain the integrity of the internship program, the following guidelines
will be followed strictly by the department in deciding whether a position qualifies as an
internship.
- The work assigned to the intern must be commensurate with
his/her academic qualifications.
- The student must work in an environment where the immediate
supervisor and other team members have the technical expertise that will
enable them to: (1) act as mentors to the student and (2) be able to give
an informed opinion about the performance of the student.
Hours Worked Per Week and Credits Earned:
The number of credit hours earned depends, as detailed
below, upon the number of hours of work during the semester.
-
To earn 2 credit hours, the student must work a minimum
of 16 hours per week on the average.
-
To earn 3 credit hours, the student must work a minimum
of 20 hours per week on the average.
-
To earn 4 credit hours, the student must work a minimum
of 24 hours per week on the average.
-
To earn 5 credit hours, the student must work a minimum
of 32 hours per week on the average.
Duration of the Internship:
The duration of the internship must satisfy the following requirements:
- An internship must begin on (or before) the first day of classes.
- An internship must end on (or after) the last day of classes.
- An internship period must span the fall semester, winter
semester, or the 12-week summer semester.
- An internship cannot span only one of the two 6-week spring or summer sessions.
Resources for Finding an Internship Position:
The student is responsible for finding an internship position.
The main source is the GVSU Student Career Services Office. It maintains
a central repository of employment opportunities and also provides various
career-related services. The office is located in suite 206 of the Student
Services Building; it's web site is http://www.gvsu.edu/careers/
Additional resources include:
-
Employers that communicate jobs to the School of CIS directly, are then forwarded to the
Student Career Services Office (see above). Additionally, the School of CIS
posts such advertisements on its Job Opportunities Board located next to the elevator on the 2nd floor.
-
Employers where our students have interned recently.
-
Many students in the past have found internship positions
through networking with other students who are (or have been) pursuing
an internship.
-
Direct search of websites of national companies.
Paperwork Needed for Registration:
Every student who intends to register for CS 490 must
meet with the internship coordinator the semester before the internship
is to begin. The student is required to bring the following two
documents to the meeting:
-
A completed Internship Agreement form. The form
can be obtained from the School of CIS office. Please notice that the
form requires the employer to attach a description of the internship responsibilities
and learning objectives. The attachment is described in more details
in (2) below.
-
A letter of appointment from your employer. The letter
must include, at the least, the following items:
- A short paragraph about the company.
- A short paragraph about the unit and team within which you will work.
- A detailed paragraph about the specific tasks that you will perform.
- The letter of Appointment must be on the letterhead of the Internship organization and signed by the employer.
Biweekly Journals:
A journal is a record of activities. It should not be
treated as a report that is written in its entirety when it is due. Rather,
journal entries should be written as soon as tasks are performed. A journal
is an important tool because it serves, among other things, to improve
one's time management skills and ability to estimate the time required
for future tasks.
Below is information about when and how to submit the
journals followed by the format of the journals.
When and How to Submit the Journals:
- Journals must be submitted biweekly on every other Monday.
- Every journal is to cover the period of the preceding two weeks.
- The first journal is due on the third Monday of classes.
- The last journal is due on the Monday of the last week of classes.
- Send the journal as an email attachment (in Word®
or plain text format). The subject line of your email message must
be "Internship Journal"
- Copy (CC) your supervisor the email that you send.
This is important in order to keep all involved parties informed.
Format of the journal: (Please include accurate header information as shown below.)
Name: <you name>
Company:
Journal date: <date submitted>
Journal period - FROM: <date> TO: <date>
Total hours worked this period:
Monday, mm/dd/yy (X hours)
9:00 am - 10:00 am
One or two short clear sentences describing the task or event; more sentences if you feel the task/event is significant.
10:00 am - 12:00 noon
One or two short clear sentences describing the task or event; more sentences if you feel the task/event is significant.
1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
One or two short clear sentences describing the task or event; more sentences if you feel the task/event is significant.
Tuesday, mm/dd/yy (X hours)
Same format as monday
Continue for remaining days left in the two-week period.
Comments:
Enter here any additional comments that you may wish to document regarding the 2-week period.
The Internship Experience Report:
The Internship Experience Report is due on the Monday of the last week of classes.
The report should be written for CS and IS readers; they
are familiar with the concepts, but not necessarily familiar with the particular
work that you have done during your internship. Therefore, avoid tutorial
style writing on basics. Suggested contents of the report include:
-
A header in order to make the report self-contained as much
as possible. The header must include: your name, your major and
classification, your job title at work, company name, department/division
name, a URL (if any) of the company/unit, the name of your immediate supervisor,
supervisor's title, supervisor's email address, period worked, total hours
worked, and the date of the report.
-
A paragraph describing the company and the department at which you worked.
-
An overall description of the project(s) that you were involved in.
-
Specific description of the tasks that you worked on.
-
Specific description of new technical skills that you acquired.
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Specific description of new non-technical but work-related skills that you acquired.
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Specific comments on whether the tasks that you were assigned matched your education and capabilities.
-
Specific comments on whether your internship experience has helped you in mapping a career path.
-
Specific comments on whether your internship experience has
helped you identify areas where you need to pursue further education/learning.
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Top three things that you liked about your internship experience.
-
Top three things that you disliked about your internship experience.
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Any additional comments you may have.
Towards the end of the semester, Career Services will send you a
"Student's Evaluation of Internship/Cooperative Education" form.
Please complete it and return it per the instructions. Career Services will
send the School of CIS a copy of your completed forms. For your information,
you can
download a copy of the form here.
Towards the end of the semester, Career Services will send you a
"Student's Evaluation of Internship/Cooperative Education" form.
Please complete it and return it per the instructions. Career Services will send
the School of CIS a copy of your completed forms. For your information, you can
view the form here.
CS 490 is a Credit/No-credit course. In order to get credit,
the following four items must be submitted in a timely and satisfactory
manner
- A set of biweekly Work Journals submitted by the student. For details, click here.
- An Internship Experience Report submitted by the student. For details, click here.
- A Student Evaluation of Internship/Cooperative Education report submitted by the student.
For details, click here.
- A Site Supervisor Evaluation of Intern report submitted by the supervisor. For details, click here.
- For other requirements, please refer to the GVSU catalog for other requirements. Look up "Internship" in the index of the catalog.
The purpose for these submissions is to verify that the student
has performed the agreed upon work, has worked the required number of hours,
and that the employer was satisfied with the level of performance of the
student.
For Employers:
Welcome to the Internship page of the School of Computing and Information Systems (CIS)
at Grand Valley State University
(GVSU) in Allendale, Michigan. We are eager to create new experiences for
our students. We are a large department (over 500 undergraduate students
and over 120 graduate students). An Internship is a required activity of all
undergraduates in the department. Our students have been consistently rated
very highly by their employers during internships and permanent employment.
You are invited to return to the top of this page and
follow links that will give you more information about our university,
department, employers' evaluations of our interns, and our internship program.
If you have any questions or would like to participate
in our Internship program, please let us know by sending an email to the
CIS Internship Coordinator at Internship@cis.gvsu.edu
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