Employers and recruiters will be on campus speaking to NIU students about internships and co-op programs Wednesday at the Co-operative Education Career Fair.

From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., about 44 employers will be at the Duke Ellington Ballroom in the Holmes Student Center, said Virginia McKeefery-Reynolds, assistant director of the Co-operative Education Department.

Each speaker will have a display table with videos and materials dealing with internships and co-op programs, McKeefery-Reynolds said.

Students can bring resumes if they want, McKeefery-Reynolds said, but it is not required. “It’s a casual kind of walk-through fair,” she said.

There will be a good cross-section of sizes and types of companies who will be represented, McKeefery-Reynolds said.

A lot of registration forms were sent, but they only wanted 40-50 acceptances because “it’s a workable kind of size,” she said. Twenty-five percent of the companies who were represented last year are returning.

McKeefery-Reynolds organized the fair but faculty and staff from the Co-operative Education Department, Career Planning and Placement and other departments, helped. Two communication studies practicum students, Larry White and Craig Hitchcock, worked on advertisements, she said.

Student volunteers will be assisting at the fair, McKeefery-Reynolds said. Volunteers are from the Organization of Black Business Students, the Sociology Student Advisory Committee, the Student Chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery and the Society of Business Interior Designer Students.

Interior design students worked on banners and signs with supplies donated by the NIU Art Department, McKeefery-Reynolds said

Kinney Shoes and the 3M Corporation donated name tags for the event. “They are much more costly than we thought they would be,” McKeefery-Reynolds said.

Planning for the fourth annual career fair began one year ago, when the date was set, but the actual work started in October, when registration forms were sent to various companies, McKeefery-Reynolds said.

The fair is primarily paid for by the co-op department, McKeefery-Reynolds said, but some supplemental funding from the government also has helped. The Co-operative Education Department is partially federally funded.