NIU students looking for summer employment and internships may not have to look beyond their own campus.

The Eighth Annual Co-Op and Internship Fair will be held in the Holmes Student Center’s Duke Ellington Ballroom on, Feb. 13th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The fair is for students wishing to find an internship for either the summer or during the school year that will help develop their skills and prepare them for the future.

More than 80 organizations will attend the fair. Included among them will be Amoco, Jewel, IBM, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., as well as eight to ten university departments and many private firms.

Organizations will be accepting resumes, conducting interviews, and some may even be hiring on the spot.

The only requirements students need to apply for internships are the successful completion of 30 credit hours and a cumulative grade point average of a 2.00.

If a student is a transfer from another college, the only requirements are the successful completion of one semester and a transfer cumulative GPA of 2.00.

Casey Bozek, a NIU co-op program representative, said, “The co-op program is a new way of learning. It is an integration of classroom theory into on-the-job experience.”

NIU’s co-op and internship program has about 1,500 students actively seeking assignments, compared with about 1,000 students placed last year, Bozek said.

Among the benefits of being in the co-op and internship program is that for every 120 hours of work, students can earn one credit hour. Students also can gain first-hand knowledge which will look good on a resume and give them experience.

Bozek said students at the fair should follow a couple simple hints, including: dressing professionally, bringing many copies of a resume, and writing a follow-up letter to each firm they contacted.

Last year’s fair drew about 500 students, Bozek said.

“We hope to get as many as 1,000 this year,” he said.

For further details, students may go to the co-op educational department in the Holmes Student Center, Rm. 232 or call 753-7138.