Engineering Co-op/Internship Employment Opportunities

Co-op/Internship Employment Opportunities

WKU Engineering offers and encourages internship and/or co-op experience-based learning opportunities for our engineering students. Our program is coordinated through a joint effort with our Engineering Industrial Partnership Coordinator, our Engineering Academic Advisers and WKU Career Services to offer paid employment opportunities that provide excellent professional practice experiences for our student engineers. These opportunities complement our project based learning curriculum and provide an integrated learning experience for our students and advantages to the employers as well.

WKU Engineering co-ops are most often parallel or continuous in format.

• Parallel: With a parallel co-op, students may work one or more non-alternating semesters for an employer. This may be composed of a full-time summer internship followed by continuous part-time employment during the school year for 10-20 hours per week while being a full-time student at WKU.
• Continuous or One Year Format: Students may work full time for an employer for 12 months following their junior year. Some students may choose to work back to back for only two semesters such as a spring/summer or summer/fall rotation with an employer. Both of these co-ops require prior approval from the student's adviser and usually extend graduation by one year. This is an extra year the student is earning an engineering co-op salary that can be used to assist with future college expenses. The benefits of spreading the four-year tuition payment over a five-year period and gaining engineering work experience often outweigh the additional year added to graduation.

Many of our engineering students work in Summer Engineering Internship programs across the commonwealth and outside of the state. They are usually for a summer or ten week period and are paid work experiences.

Students may choose to perform the internship or co-op work experience with or without course credit. Our WKU Engineering department does not offer Engineering course credit for internships or co-ops; however, we encourage students to pursue these opportunities as enhancements to our curriculum. If students would like to take course credit, which can be helpful in maintaining full-time student status for insurance or financial aid, they may enroll in IDST 369 or Co-op 200. These courses are offered through WKU Career Services at the cost of one tuition hour.

Career Services Link to Internship & Co-op Courses