Cooperative Education & Internships

Contact: The Field Experience Office

The Campus Career Network, One Career
Center Way

Phone: 545-2224

The Campus Career Network's Field Experience program is the source for internships and cooperative education at the University. Each offers students opportunities to work as "apprentices" with professionals from any field and experience the work world first hand before graduation. Students learn new skills, test their academic theories, and explore professional goals while making valuable contributions in the workplace and to society.

Cooperative Education is a unique partnership between education and industry, that enables students to combine semesters of classroom study with periods of off-campus employment and training while earning a salary. Career Network staff place qualified students in paid, four- to six-month positions in business and government which complement and enhance their University studies. Internships provide an opportunity for students to work and learn from professionals in education, government, service agencies, the non-profit sector, and selected other industries while earning academic credit.

These programs emphasize the educational, personal and financial benefits of preprofes-sional work experience. Also, every aspect of each program, from application through placement, simulates the employment process and helps students become informed job seekers and job holders well before they graduate.

Admission is open to students in good standing from all majors.

The program's inclusion as part of Career Services affords student access to hundreds of employer representatives who visit campus each year and consider practical experience an important prerequisite for permanent employment.

Opportunities for field experience are found in industries such as manufacturing, banking, insurance, high technology, education, health care, tourism, communications, agriculture, and entertainment, in federal and state agencies, and private nonprofit organizations. They exist throughout Massachusetts and the northeast, and in many other locations across the U.S. In sum, field experience offers a chance to clarify personal and academic goals, test career objectives, travel, earn money for school, develop maturity and self-confidence, and acquire a better understanding of employment prospects in chosen fields.

Field Experience Advising is available Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. For further information, contact the Field Experience Office, tel. 545-6265.