General Information
As you are planning for an internship or a job, please consider the following steps:
- Plan Early. Start thinking about an internship or job at least one semester before you would like to start. Visit with a departmental advisor to brainstorm areas appropriate for your interests.
- The Career Center in the Tivoli is a good resource for seeking full-time professional opportunities. Go to the Career Center in person or online, sign up for an orientation, search their database, and create/submit a resume.
- The American Association of Geographers offers a collection of useful resources to help guide you in finding jobs, internships, assistantships, and more career planning opportunities.
- The Experiential Learning Center coordinates internships in Geography and Envrionmental Sciences.
- Additionally, check the bulletin board in the GES hallway, where job and internship opportunities are posted.
- Fine-tune your resume with expert advice from the CU Denver Business School Alumni Network (BSAN) and ResumeBuilder.com's College Student Resume Guide.
- Important note: You should set up an internship through the university and the Experiential Learning Center. This ensures a more positive experience (see information below).
- Lastly, it is important to provide feedback about your experiences to both the Career Center and your departmental advisor. This helps them to advise future students.
We suggest you start early in the process so that your GES advisor can help you narrow your interests to find an internship or job which is most effective in meeting your goals and interests. Sometimes the best internship and full-time job experiences are found via "pounding the pavement": talking to colleagues, informational interviews, and researching organizations in your area of interest. Potential employers are most impressed with people who have advance knowledge, experience, or a demonstrated interest in a position.
Internships
An internship is an important experience during your education and GES highly encourages this for all students. You gain workplace skills, additional knowledge about a particular content area, and lay the groundwork for future employment. Sometimes internships can even evolve into a full-time position if am employer has an opening and you have performed well.
Various ways exist to set up internships. Types of internships include: paid and for credit; paid and not for credit; unpaid and for credit. This flexibility allows for different situations, but all are ways to gain unique experiences. Even unpaid internships are extremely beneficial and so you should be flexible and open-minded about how they are structured.
Important: The GES supports only internships that are set up through the university and the Experiential Learning Center. This ensures mechanisms are in place for a richer and more educational experience. Both the employer and the student are protected by university structures, rules and regulations. Thus, educational goals and objectives are established for the internship (rather than, say, serving coffee) and the employer is ensured the student has the responsbility to do high quality work.
You can find an internship that is already posted/listed through the Experiential Learning Center. Additionally, you can apply for a position posted on the bulletin board, or even seek out your own opportunity at a business or agency. In the last two cases, we still ask that the proper paperwork is submitted to the Experiential Learning Center so that the internship is formally run through the university.
Internship steps and examples for Geography & Environmental Sciences
Jobs
If you are getting ready to graduate, the Career Center at CU Denver is a place to find full-time employment opportunities, assistance with a job search, resume help and interviewing tips.
There are also many job and career sites serving the geography and environmental science community. We have provided a list of some potential agencies and organizations to help you investigate some possibilities. Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive and is ever-changing. Here are a few sites: