The Department of Computer Science encourages students, starting in their freshman year, to participate in ECU’s Cooperative Education/Intern program, and offers academic credit for qualifying co-op/internships in the computer science field. Using co-op and internships, students can integrate classroom study with professional experiences in the major. Opportunities include alternating semesters of full time work and full time study, part-time work while taking classes, summer work, and international work.

Job prospects in computer science are good and there is a growing need for more computer science graduates to fill those jobs. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified before Congress that the United States may no longer "remain a technology powerhouse" if this situation isn't adddressed. Employers and industry experts are worried that there are too few computer science graduates to meet the demands of the future. Jeff Vitter, the Dean of the College of Science at Purdue University, expressed the situation concisely when he said "Undergraduate enrollment dropped nearly 50% between 2002 and 2005, in large part because of the common perception that all the good jobs are moving overseas. Nothing could be further from the truth! There are more information technology jobs in the U.S. now than ever before even more than at the height of the dot-com bubble! And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 60% of the nearly 1.5 million net new job openings in science and engineering from 2004-2014 will be for IT specialists!"

ECU graduates have been hired by many organizations including:

• IBM
• Credit Suisse
• Microsoft
• Red hat
• Rural Sourcing Inc.
• Cisco
• Westinghouse
• Disney World
• NASA
• NSA
• National Institute of Health
• National Weather Service
• SAS
• Purdue Pharmaceuticals
• DSM Pharmaceuticals
• Raytheon
• Duke University
• and many others