Accounting Internship Instructions
1. Meet with one of the advisors in the KSOM Advising Center to discuss the benefits, costs, and appropriateness of your prospective internship. Ensure that you make proper arrangements to ensure that you can still meet your anticipated graduation date if you enroll in an internship. To do so frequently requires significant modifications to your current and future semesters of study. The Advisors can help you ensure that you don’t inadvertently endanger your graduation goals by overlooking potential course scheduling problems. Unless, other unusual arrangements are made, the internship will count as one of your 3 credit Accounting electives and will be graded using normal letter grades (i.e., pass/fail options are not normally allowed).
2. Once you are confident of the benefit of the internship and have made suitable arrangements for the possible modification of your course schedule(s), get an Internship Application form from the Accounting Department’s Administrative Assistant, Laura A. Talerico, located on the 3rd floor of Brennan Hall.
3. Clearly print all of the required information (your name, the date of application, your social security number, your address, your major, your current grade point average, your telephone numbers, your University email address, the semester for which you want to enroll in the internship, the starting and ending dates, the company’s name and address, the name and title of your on-site supervisor, and your signature).
4. Obtain a job description of the internship experience. This job description should be written by your prospective on-site supervisor and should be on the company’s letterhead.
5. Return the properly completed application with the associated job description to Mrs. Laura Talerico.
6. At this point you have only applied for consideration. Please note that the prospective internship student must have overall and major grade point averages that meet or exceed 2.67 to be eligible for the program. Additionally, applications for internship credit must meet the other normal registration rules (i.e., registration before the end of add deadlines, etc.). Also, the internship must consist of experiences deemed worthy of university credit. This decision, while based on the information that you provide, is made by and requires the concurrence of the Faculty Supervisor, the Departmental Chairperson, and the KSOM Dean. The importance of the job description should not be underestimated as it may serve as an important determinant of whether an application is approved. Also, internship credit can never be granted retroactively. This means that an internship will not be granted for any accounting-related experience/relationship/job that existed prior to the student’s application. Every so often, we have a student who tries to claim that their previously or currently existing accounting job should be allowed to count as an internship. It can not and will not be allowed as it violates both the rules and intent of the program. Finally, the internship must consist of at least 160 hours of accounting related experience.
7. Upon receipt of your appropriately completed internship application and associated job description Mrs. Talerico will log the date of your application and will forward it the appropriate parties for their consideration and possible approval. These appropriate parties include the Accounting Internship Director, Dr. James Boyle, the Accounting Department Chairperson, Internship Director, and the Dean of the KSOM.
8. If approved, the internship program requires that the experience be properly recorded and supported by: 1) maintaining a internship journal, 2) by writing a paper about one of the topics encountered during the internship, 3) by filling out our departmental questionnaire, and 4) by having your on-site supervisor fill out and return one of OUR evaluation forms. It is important to note that the topics chosen for the paper require the approval of the Internship Faculty Supervisor, and that upon completion of your internship, your on-site supervisor needs to fill out and send us an evaluation of you (using our evaluation form that will be given to you in the initial application package – see step 2).
9. During the internship, maintain contact with your Faculty Supervisor. The easiest way to maintain this contact (especially when you are involved with an out of town internship) is via weekly emails. If possible, please use your University-provided account as it becomes difficult to keep track of email addresses for other domains (i.e., hotmail, bigfoot, msn, aol, etc.). The first email should be sent to your Faculty Supervisor as soon as possible. It can consist of nothing more than a simple message indicating that you have started your internship and are alive and well.
10. Send the first half of your journal to your Faculty Supervisor at somewhere near the halfway point of the internship (sending it as an email attachment is fine as long as it safely arrives as a file that can be accessed).
11. During your internship, think about potential paper topics and discuss these topics with your Faculty Supervisor. Remember that the potential topic requires approval from your Faculty Supervisor. The paper must be a well-written scholarly treatment of any approved internship-related topic. There is no specified length for the paper. However, these papers frequently tend to average around ten pages in length. But please note that a well written, well researched, well reasoned short paper is much better than a disorganized and sloppily prepared lengthy paper.
12. Submit the second half of your journal, your paper, and your completed questionnaire to your Faculty Supervisor two weeks before the last day of classes (any or all of this can be submitted as an email attachment, as long as it can be accessed).
13. Ensure that your onsite supervisor has been given OUR evaluation form, has filled it out, and has returned it to us by the same deadline.
14. Send your on-site supervisor a thank you note. Your development as a professional is an important aspect of this experience. Being courteous and expressing your appreciation for the efforts of others is an important part of this process. A copy of your letter to your on-site supervisor should be turned into your Faculty Supervisor with your other material. Please note that this thank you note is mandatory.
15. Your final grade is based upon: 1) the input provided by your on-site supervisor, 2) the quality of your paper, and 3) the evidence provided by you via the journals regarding the academic value of the internship. Please note that all three of these items are important components of your grade.
