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Internships

Internship is an elective course in four of our programs (CSCI 3v75 in the BS programs in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, and Data Science; and CSCI 5v75 in the MS program in Computer Science). In the context of an internship, the term supervisor refers to the person who supervises your work at your employer’s site.

  1. As a student, finding an internship position is your responsibility. We post internship opportunities on our bulletin boards as well as on our Facebook page. UCA Career Services Center also provides various resources.
  2. If you are an international student, please contact the Center for Global Learning and Engagement first.
  3. Once you find a suitable internship position, you must complete the Internship Approval Form, signed by you and your supervisor, and submit it to the CSE department chair through email at least a week before the beginning of the term in which you plan to enroll in an internship class.
  4. The work must be supervised and technical in nature. Routine jobs that do not require a background in Computer Science (e.g., help desk specialist, data entry specialist, and technical support specialist) are not considered technical.
  5. Once you obtain approval from the CSE department chair, the department administrative assistant will open a CSCI 3v75 section if you are an undergraduate student or a CSCI 5v75 section if you are a graduate student. The CSE department chair will be the instructor of this section. You may receive one, two, or three credits for a minimum of 100, 150, or 200 hours of work, respectively. The length of the internship period must be a minimum of ten weeks for a Fall/Spring internship and a minimum of five weeks for a Summer internship. For a BS degree, a maximum of three credit hours of internship will count towards the program requirements; for the MS degree, the upper limit is six credit hours.
  6. Like any other for-credit course, CSCI 3v75/5v75 requires you to register for credit and pay tuition. Unlike typical for-credit courses, however, CSCI 3v75/5v75 does not involve meetings/lectures (even though the class is scheduled at a specific time of the day) or exams. The grade mode is CR/NC, where CR (credit) corresponds to a satisfactory internship (as evidenced by the quality of your report and your supervisor’s evaluation), whereas NC (no credit) corresponds to an unsatisfactory internship.
  7. You must submit an internship report to the CSE department chair by the last day of classes. This document must be a minimum of five pages long (single-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman font, maximum 1’’ margins) and include the following: a brief description of the company, a description of the project and your role in it, a discussion of the problems you encountered, the solutions you offered, the lessons you learned, and a description of the knowledge, skills, and experience you gained during the internship.
  8. Your supervisor must complete the Supervisor Evaluation Form and email it to the CSE department chair by the last day of classes.
  9. Late submission of an internship report or supervisor evaluation form may result in a grade of X (incomplete). If such an X grade is not removed within a year, it will be changed automatically to an NC.