ISE488
Internship in Information Systems

Course Information

Time: No regular meeting time
Prerequisite: ISE major, U3 or U4 standing; permission of department
Goal: Provide a mechanism to gain professional skills, create personal contacts, and gain first hand experience in a computing-related field.

Contact Information

Instructor/
Course Coordinator		 Ahmad Esmaili
E-mail esmaili@cs.stonybrook.edu
Office hours By appointment only during the summer.
Office location 210 New Computer Science Bldg.

Content

This course addresses participation in local, state, national, or international private enterprise, public agencies, or nonprofit institutions. Students are required to submit progress reports and a final report on their experience to the client and to the department. May be repeated up to a limit of 12 Credits, with program limits as follows:

Additional internship credits beyond the limits above and up to a limit of 12 credits can be used to satisfy upper division University elective requirements.

Background

To enroll in the internship course you need to demonstrate that:

  1. you have or have been offered an internship related to your studies,
  2. you will work at least 180 hours during the semester, and
  3. the internship is with an organization has an established Information Technology process from which you can learn (typically, more than 50 people employed at the organization).
Typically, this is just a matter of submitting the offer letter to the course coordinator. The course coordinator will evaluate the internship for total hours and for relevance to your course of studies, and if it meets the requirements, the coordinator will sign a "Permission to Enroll" for for the class. Once the Computer Science Department processes the form, you will be allowed to register for the course within Solar.

International Students

If you are an international student holding an F-1 Student Visa, you cannot work in the United States during your studies unless you receive special permission. CPT, Curricular Practical Training, is an employment authorization given to students during their studies. This is a great chance to get hands-on-experience working for a company in the US in a way that enhances your education.

To take advantage of this opportunity, you should:

  1. Schedule an appointment with an International Students advisor to discuss the process for applying for CPT.
  2. You should apply for a job. You can find a job through the various on-campus Job Fairs or through on-line services such as Monster. Be sure to check with the Career Center for job opportunities. They are very helpful in all aspects of job searching. You should check that the position offered is an internship and is available for F-1 Students. It is advisable to look for a summer internship as this won’t deduct from the amount of time you might need for an OPT, a different program offered for graduating students.
  3. When a company offers you a position, you should inform your new employer that a process of 2 to 4 weeks might be needed before you can start working.
  4. Download the CPT application form and complete it.
  5. Ask your employer to write a job offer letter. Your new employer should follow the instructions in the CPT application under ‘Employment Job Offer’.
  6. Schedule an appointment with either the ISE488 course coordinator or with the Undergraduate Director, and ask him/her to write a support letter for your employment. Follow the instructions in the CPT application under "Guidelines for Academic Advisors Preparing the Support Letter." The support letter should explain why your internship is an "integral part of your program of study". The University requires that your internship is either mandatory or else optional, but used to meet graduation requirements. Your ISE 488 advisor will review your academic record to ensure that the credits for the internship course are required to meet your graduation requirements. ISE students can use ISE488 to satisfy one upper division elective, but CSE students can only use ISE488 to satisfy a specialization requirement.
  7. Fill out a "Permission to Enroll for Internship" form. You can find the form on the back of the wall of the Undergraduate Computer Science secretary’s office. You may need to fill out an additional ‘Internship Agreement’ form for the Career Center; this form is also located outside the Undergraduate secretary’s office.
  8. Once you have been approved to enroll for an internship, register for the ISE 488 course online.
  9. Make copies of all letters and forms and hand in your CPT application along with your I-20 form to International Students Services. Check periodically with International Student Services to confirm that your CPT was approved.
  10. If you do not hold a Social Security Card, you will need to apply for one before you can start work. You can apply for your card through the Social Security office in Patchogue.

Assignment Information

You are required to submit quarterly status reports for this course. Each report should be sent to the course coordinator as a MS Word or PDF file attached to an e-mail. The name of the file should include your last name and the date of the end of the reporting period. For example, the file could be named:
Kelly-050809.pdf

The quarterly report should be between two to three pages and should contain:

At the end of the semester (no later than the last day of final exams), you should submit a final report (approximately 5 pages) describing your internship activities. The filename of the report should follow the same conventions as your quarterly report, except that the semester and "-FinalReport" should replace the date, as in:
Kelly-Summer11-FinalReport.pdf

The report should contain:

An excellent final report was provided by Kelly Deng. Her internship final report provides an excellent example of an insightful final report.

Grades and Exams

This is a three credit S/U graded course. Your final grade is based primarily on your quarterly status reports and your final report.

The Pass/No Credit (P/NC) option is not available for this course.