Externship (Shadow) Program

The CBU Externship Program is designed to provide students with a realistic view of a career field while helping them clarify their career interests and giving them content to add to their resume. An externship is a short-term experience (typically 1 to 2 days, but can range from a few hours to several days) in which students shadow a “day in the life” of a professional or complete one or more informational interviews with professionals.

Externships allow students to “test” a career, build their resume, develop valuable contacts, and explore a professional career environment. Alumni and employers who serve as externship sponsors have the chance to increase their organization’s visibility, build relationships with students, and develop future interns and full-time employees.

Externship experiences occur during CBU’s Winter and Spring Breaks and may be completed in in-person, virtual, or hybrid formats. The organization/site will complete a brief externship profile, and Career Services will announce externship opportunities and details to students and match interested students with their externship sponsor.

  • For Winter Break externships, Career Services will secure site commitments starting in October with students being informed of their site in October or November and completing the externship typically in mid-December to early January.
  • For Spring Break externships, Career Services will contact sites starting in late January with students receiving site information throughout February and completing the externship during Spring Break week in March.

Examples of possible externship activities include, but are not limited to:

  • Meeting with the student one-on-one to discuss career, industry, and employment trends
  • Arranging informational interviews with multiple company employees to allow the student to gain a broad perspective of the career field and organization
  • Allowing the student to attend meetings and other functions
  • Providing company literature for students to review
  • Observations of professionals performing their daily responsibilities (Examples: watching a surgeon operate or observing a teacher in a classroom)
  • Performing general office tasks
  • Touring the organization
  • Working on short-term projects and work items is beneficial to the student and the sponsor.

If you are a student interested in completing an externship, or an alumni or employer interested in hosting an extern, please email Cathy Lantrip at clantrip@cbu.edu