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By Amy Geiszler-Jones

WSU’s cooperative education internship program is hitting the road in hopes of finding more employers for the hundreds of students it serves each year.

For the first time, the program, the largest in the state and one of the region’s biggest, has put together a "roadtrip" to potential employers outside Kansas.

Thirty-seven engineering, business and computer science majors will visit six prominent high-tech employers, including NASA, Honeywell and Lockheed Martin, in Houston Nov. 8-9.

While the program has steadily gained employers – growing from 44 companies in 1979 to 425 current employers – it needs more positions, says director Connie Dietz.

Co-op, as the program is commonly known, has long had more students interested in participating than it has positions for. The program is popular because it combines paid, on-the-job experience with academic credit in a student’s field of interest.

A trip like this offers a chance for students to check out potential employers and vice versa through on-site visits. It also will connect students with successful alumni living outside Wichita.

The group will network with some of the more than 700 alumni living in the Houston area at a dinner Nov. 7. Among those alums are 25 former students who were offered full-time jobs with NASA after their co-op internships ended.

The bus and lodging costs – about $200 per student – are being picked up by the colleges of business, engineering, liberal arts and sciences and the co-op program. Students paid $25 to reserve their spot on the trip and will pay for their own meals, according to Dietz. The Alumni Association is hosting the Nov. 7 dinner.

"If this works out, we would like to take a similar trip every fall," Dietz says. Other potential cities include Chicago, Kansas City and Denver.

More than 6,000 students from each of WSU’s six academic colleges have participated in the program since its start in 1979.