Career Courses

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

Process for enrolling in CLA 3896:

  1. Find and accept an internship.
  2. Make sure your internship is a minimum of 10 hours per week, totaling 120 hours worked.
  3. All internships taken for credit in the College of Liberal Arts are required to have the information submitted by the student through Handshake. View the instructions for how to complete the CLA Internship Site Agreement. 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. 

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.
 

CLA 3996, 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.

Other Offerings in CLA’s Career-Related Curriculum

Many CLA departments offer the option to earn academic credit for internships. Search the "3896" course 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.