Latest News

Getting Career-Ready: Internship Opportunities at WSU

Wright State campus after first snowfall of the season | Photograph by Soham Parikh | The Wright State Guardian

Wright State campus | Photograph by Soham Parikh | The Wright State Guardian


Internship involvement at Wright State University provides opportunities for students to step into a career before graduation.

Benefits of an internship 

A student pursuing an internship at WSU is just as important as pursuing the degree, according to Wayne Stark, a career consultant at the College of Liberal Arts Career Services. 

Stark highlighted that internships do not just provide a pathway to the working world, but are also a networking tool, provide essential skills and connect students to graduate schools.

Stark explained that students can also engage in an internship to test out different career options. 

“Many students, over the years that I’ve worked with, have done internships, and they’ve decided, ‘Oh, I really don’t know if I want to do that, after all,’” Stark said. 

Similarly, Lance Cauley, associate director of Career Services, compared an internship to test driving a car.

“You can go and see if that line of work is something that you want to get into, and it’s really like test driving those careers,” Cauley said.

For the employers, Cauley described an internship as an extended interview. Employers will bring on an intern for periods ranging from a semester to multiple years, and during this time, employers will discover how the student performs in the company, which often leads to a full-time job. 

Last year, there were over 11,000 internships that Handshake, the WSU job portal, advertised to WSU students in all colleges and all majors, according to Cauley. 

Internships at WSU

Stark clarified the process of engaging in internships specifically at Wright State. 

“Through Career Services and the career consultants in each of the colleges, [we] work with individual faculty in those departments as well as internship providers throughout the region, and really even throughout the nation in the world,” Stark said.

Each college at Wright State has faculty members connected with internship providers, with the relationship going each way. Individual students will work with a team of faculty members, career consultants and Stark (in COLA). On the other hand, internship providers will work with faculty and career consultants to find students suitable for a role. Stark also highly emphasized the support students have when pursuing these opportunities.

“Regardless of what school they’re in, there is a career consultant and faculty in the departments that they come from that work together as a very strong team,” Stark explained. 

Cauley and Stark expressed several ways students can become more marketable to internships as well as the need to research these positions, regardless of year.

“It’s actually harder for a senior to find an internship than it is for a freshman or a sophomore,” Cauley said. 

Usually, companies want a student to work from multiple semesters to over a year. Senior students may only be able to work for one semester before moving onto a full-time job, Cauley voiced. 

In order to become marketable to these positions, Stark and Cauley recommended that students have a strong resume. A strong resume consists of student skills and experience, according to Stark, who is able to help COLA students tailor and refine a resume.

For more information about internships at WSU, visit the experiential learning website or specific college internship portals. 


Verified by MonsterInsights