Completing at least one internship while you are in college is probably the best thing you can do to enhance your career prospects. You gain work experience for your resume, and, just as important, you learn whether or not a job is a good fit for your interests, skills, and personality.

Student internships have ranged from working with forest preserves, a rain garden project, mosquito abatement, soil scientists, and more.

View past intern presentations

Internship Credit

With NRES, you can earn course credit for your internship experience, or possibly for volunteer experience. By taking either NRES 293 or NRES 294. If you work with a company or organization outside of NRES, you will earn credit for NRES 293 Professional Internship. To earn credit for the NRES 294 Resident Internship, you must work directly with an NRES faculty member to determine the duties and requirements.

For more details on the requirements for receiving credit for your internship and for pertinent forms, you can view our Internship Policy.

Finding Internships

Speaking with your advisor, teachers, and your peers can be a great place to start when considering the internship experience you want, and learning where to look. 

Permanent job and current internship announcements are available to all current NRES students in a Career Information Blog. We also post various career and internship opportunities on our Twitter, IllinoisNRES. To get an idea of the variety of opportunities available to our students, we have gathered a list of previous internships NRES students have completed.

Job and internship announcements are also posted electronically on the university-wide platform, Handshake @ Illinois. This service can alert you as jobs and internships in your field are added.

We also encourage students to monitor non-university resources for internship opportunities:

Volunteer Experience

There are many volunteer opportunities available that will provide you with experience directly related to NRES and your future career goals, and many different resources to help find volunteer positions:

Most natural resource areas and organizations have volunteer opportunities, so be sure to investigate different possibilities in your home town or other areas.