Students who enter the M.P.A. program with out appropriate professional experience will generally be required to serve internships. Internships are generally not available for students in the comparative and developmental administration area of specialization and are usually not available for foreign students. Interns are the employees of the public or quasi-public agencies for which they work and they receive work assignments from their supervisors at the agencies. These assignments provide pre-professional experience which augments their academic program on campus.
Appropriate professional experience can generally be defined as: at least two years of administrative full-time work experience in the student's area of interest in the M.P.A. program. Whether the student meets this criterion will be determined by the director of the Division of Public Administration upon recommendation of the M.P.A. Coordinator after consultation with the work supervisor. Mid-career students will also be asked to participate in intern meetings and activities, when deemed appropriate by the director. If the student meets both of these criteria, the internship requirement will be waived and the student's program will consist of 39 semester hours of course work. For all other students, the internship is a requirement for accomplishment of the M.P.A. degree at NIU.
Interns generally work between 20 and 24 hours per week and are paid on an hourly basis by their agencies. Specific hours are arranged between en students and their employing agencies. It is expected that work hours will be planned so as not to conflict with course work, since interns are required to register for a full course load of regular academic study.
For more details, please refer to MPA Student Handbook.