Career Management Courses

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CLA provides a comprehensive career curriculum that is designed to meet all of your career readiness needs, from the beginning of your college experience to its completion and beyond. 

Here in CLA Career Services, we play a major role in this curriculum through our career-related course offerings. Other entities in the college play a significant part as well.

Career Courses Offered by CLA Career Services

CLA Career Services offers several career courses you can take as you explore your academic and career options, develop your Core Career Competencies and gain experience, and prepare for your life after graduation—whatever it may look like.

CLA 3002, Career Kickstarter: Finding Internships and Other Career-Related Experiences

For sophomores. This course helps you pursue opportunities to gain career experience — such as internships, research, learning abroad, and community-engaged learning — that set you up for future success post-graduation. 

Assignments include researching internship options, writing cover letters, and learning how to network as a student.

CLA 3201, Career Planning: Preparing for Your Post-Graduation Plans

For juniors and seniors. This course helps you plan and prepare for your post-graduation plans, such as finding a job or applying for graduate school.

Assignments include preparing for interviews, conducting informational interviews, and crafting your personal brand for cover letters and/or personal statements.

CLA 3896, Internship Reflection: Making Meaning of Your Experience

This is an online, interdisciplinary course that is open to any CLA student. It helps you make the most of your internship experience through personal reflection and engagement with classmates to learn from others’ internship experiences.

You intentionally build your Career Management competency so that you can better navigate the world of work and articulate the value of your internship experience.

This course is one of the primary ways you can earn academic credit for an internship, and you can repeat it for subsequent internships at new internship sites or for new internship positions. The course is offered every semester.

Here’s the process for enrolling in CLA 3896:

  • Find and accept an internship.
  • Make sure your internship is a minimum of 10 hours per week, totaling 120 hours worked during the term you will enroll in the course.
  • All internships taken for credit in the College of Liberal Arts are required to submit information through Handshake. Learn how to “Request an Experience”. You will need information such as your supervisor’s first and last name, email address, and a list of responsibilities to complete the experience form. 

Requesting an experience through Handshake will prompt your internship site supervisor and the course instructor to approve the internship experience. Once your internship has been approved, your course instructor will contact you with a permission number to enroll.

If you need assistance with completing this process, please contact the course instructor. 

CLA 3890, Internship Reflection: Building on your Summer Internship Experience

In this 7 week, online fall course, students reflect on their summer internship experience to analyze and identify which components from their internship work, environment, and professional relationships energized them, and which core career competencies they developed. Students will intentionally examine multiple perspectives to crystallize their values, interests, and strengths, and create the next steps for their career and life. Through this process, students will practice leveraging their internship experience for upcoming professional opportunities, as well as gain the tools for creating an authentic professional identity, grounded in their liberal arts education, in an evolving job market and world.

The course instructor will provide you a permission number to enroll in August, only after you complete the following prerequisites: 

  • Completion of a Site Agreement by July 1. View the student instructions for completing the Site Agreement.
  • Completion of a non-credit online Canvas module done concurrently with your internship which includes activities such as a Learning Agreement and Final Evaluation.
  • On track to complete 120 hours at your summer internship before the fall semester begins.

CLA’s Internship Coordinator will contact you once your Site Agreement has been approved to support you with completing the prerequisites.

The CLA Career Readiness Certificate

You can take an individual course anywhere within CLA’s career readiness curriculum at any time. Know, though, that if you want to—and we strongly encourage you to do this!—you can take a sequential series of these courses to earn a Career Readiness Certificate

Similar to a major, the certificate will appear on your official University transcript and will signal to potential employers, graduate/professional schools, and others that you have done all you can to fully develop your Core Career Competencies during your undergraduate experience.

Declare the Career Readiness Certificate now
by completing the Career Readiness Certificate declaration form.

You can earn the Career Readiness Certificate by satisfying a series of requirements through:

  • Active participation in a Career Management curriculum (you’ll complete a minimum of six academic credits).
  • Ongoing development of your Core Career Competencies in your academic courses.
  • Active learning and reflection through co-curricular experiences like internships, learning abroad, community engagement, and research practice, and through enrolling in an academic course related to that experience.

View Full Requirements

Other Offerings in CLA’s Career-Related Curriculum

Opportunities Through Academic Departments

Many CLA departments offer the option to earn academic credit for internships. Search the "3896course number and department designator in ScheduleBuilder. Courses can be in-person or online or offered as individualized instruction. Generally, internship courses offered through departments have a heavier concentration on the application of major-related theories or concepts during the internship experience. Check with your advisor if you have additional questions.

Earning Academic Credit for Internships

The online course CLA 3896, Internship Reflection: Making Meaning of Your Experience, is one of the primary ways you can earn academic credit for an internship. It’s offered every semester, and you can repeat it for subsequent internships at new internship sites or for new internship positions.

Many individual academic departments in CLA also offer opportunities for you to earn academic credit for an internship through a designated internship course, numbered 3896.

The Office of Student Experience (OSE)

The Office of Student Experience houses two programs: the First-Year Experience (FYE) program which is a required, two-credit course for all first-year students in CLA, and the Transfer Semester Experience Program (TSE) which is an elective, one-credit course for CLA transfer students.

  • CLA 1001, First-Year Experience I—a course in the fall that introduces you to the concept of career readiness.
  • CLA 1002, First-Year Experience II—a course in the spring that focuses on academic planning and engagement, all with career readiness in mind.
  • CLA 3001, CLA Transfer Semester Experience (TSE)—a course that helps first-semester CLA transfer students make a smooth transition and connect with campus resources.

(Note: If you are a President’s Emerging Scholars [PES] student in CLA, in place of CLA 1001 you take CLA 1005, Introduction to Liberal Arts Learning; and in place of CLA 1002 you take CLA 2005, Introduction to Liberal Education and Responsible Citizenship.)

International Students and Academic Credit for Curricular Practical Training (CPT)

If you’re an international student and you need to earn academic credit for Curricular Practical Training (CPT) purposes, CLA 3896, Internship Reflection: Making Meaning of Your Experience, might be a great option for you.