Engineering Professional Practice

Purpose
The Engineering Professional Practice is a department aimed to help University of Tennessee engineers enter the work force. The Professional Practice is also a contact point for outside companies to find potential employees from the University of Tennessee. The main goal of Engineering Professional Practice is to help students in the Tickle College of Engineering find and obtain paid internships, co-ops and full-time employment. This department was established in 1926, and it is the second oldest office of its kind in the south.

Location
The Office of Engineering Professional Practice is located in Perkins Hall. The address is 110 Perkins Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996. Within Perkins Hall, the official office of the Engineering Professional Practice is on the 1stfloor, in the south hallway of the building.

The website location for Engineering Professional Practice is https://www.coop.utk.edu and this leads to various links and services that the Engineering Processional Practice provides.

Events
The Office of Engineering Professional Practice holds numerous events and socials designed to help students find paid employment. The main event that is held in both the fall and spring semesters is the Engineering Expo. This expo is a career fair that is specifically designed to help UTK undergraduate engineers find an internship, co-op or a full time position with a company. The Engineering Expo is a two-day event, where the first day is a job fair where students meet with employers, and the second day is an interview day, where students have interviews for paid positions within the companies they talked to. The Engineering Expo in Fall 2019 was the largest expo to date.

Other events are banquets, and picnics for both students and companies looking to hire engineers. These are typically held in the courtyard behind the Science Engineering Research Facility building, or the SERF building for short. Also, Professional Practice urges students to attend the University of Tennessee Job Fair, because employers looking for engineering students attend this event.

A total list of the events and their date held by the Office of Engineering Professional Practice can be found at https://tickle.utk.edu/news/events/.

Services
The Office of Professional Practice helps students find and make decisions about career opportunities. A main service is helping students craft and review their resumes. This helps the students go into interviews with a professional and accurate resume. Also, this office allows students sign up for interviews prior to events. Doing this helps the student and employer find the right match for a mutually beneficial work experience.

Trained job counselors are also on staff and they help students determine if a internship, co-op or full-time job offer is right for them. Often times students decide that they do not want to fulfill the time commitment of a co-op, so the counselors can help guide them to find internships that better fit their needs.