Internships

Academic Catalog Description:

CJS 4985. INTERNSHIP IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 2-4 sh
Students apply classroom knowledge to a law enforcement setting. Internships in a criminal justice setting taken from other disciplines might substitute for CJS 4985; approval for any such substitutions must be obtained from program coordinator before registration (click here to download an approval form for internships from other disciplines). Prerequisites: Junior standing, at least one core course and approval of instructor and program coordinator.

Recent internship sites where CJS students have interned are: the US Marshall’s Service, Montgomery County Pre-Release and Reentry Services, Greensboro Police Department, Richland County Sheriff’s Department, Alamance County Dispute Settlement and Youth Services, and the District Attorney’s Office of Alamance County.

Steps to Getting an Internship in CJS for elective course credit:

1. Identify an internship site. It is your responsibility to identify a potential field placement and an on-site supervisor. You may want to make appointments to talk to several people working in CJS-related positions. Other resources include the faculty on the CJS Advisory Committee and the staff at the Student Professional Development Center. The work you propose to do must be CJS in nature and it must be supervised by a qualified person at the internship site.
2. Determine the number of hours you will work using the table below. In general, you receive approximately one hour of credit for every 40 hours of work on-site. Forty hours at one site fulfills Elon’s Core Curriculum Experiential Learning Requirement (ELR). Most students find it takes more than 40 hours to become a contributing worker at their internship site; consider committing to 80, 140 or even 182 hours of work. A total of 4 credit hours of internship may be applied as an elective in the CJS minor. Distributed across the semester, the work-load looks approximately like this:
   

   Credit Hours	Hours per week (over a 14 week semester)
   1	3-5
   2	5-10
   3	10-13
   4	13-15

3. Find a faculty sponsor. A faculty member on the CJS Advisory Committee must agree to serve as your faculty sponsor. Meet with your faculty sponsor to discuss your learning goals, your academic assignments and your planned contacts. Students often do background reading, write daily fieldnotes, and complete a final paper, project or presentation for their academic assignments. You will meet periodically with your faculty sponsor, so your progress may be monitored and any problems addressed.
4. Complete your online registration process through the Student Professional Development Center. Please remember, your faculty sponsor will not approve your internship if you have not already met and discussed the internship and your assignments. Once you complete the online registration process, your faculty sponsor, department chair, and advisor will be contacted to provide approval online.
5. When you begin your internship you should meet with your on-site supervisor to discuss your job duties and the nature of your supervisory contacts if you haven’t already done so.
6. Provide your on-site supervisor with a copy of the Field Supervisor Evaluation and Feedback Form (Download a sample form) to return to your faculty sponsor. Notice that you will be evaluated on your professionalism and positive attitude as well as on the quality of your work.
7. You will be assigned a letter grade by your faculty sponsor. This grade will be based on your on-site supervisor’s evaluation of your performance and your faculty sponsor’s evaluation of your experience and your academic assignments, as negotiated with your faculty sponsor. If during the course of your internship your work is determined to be unacceptable to your on-site supervisor or agency you will be withdrawn from the course and your grade will be an F. Completion of an internship taken for credit automatically satisfies an experiential learning requirement and will appear on your academic transcript.