It is the policy and practice of the Texas Department of Transportation to integrate academic studies with supervised work experience by providing employment in cooperative education and internship programs. These programs increase a student's job potential, while assisting the student financially and bringing new educational methods to the workplace. The programs enrich secondary institutions' and universities' curricula and help the institutions retain students. It is also the policy of the department to provide financial assistance to eligible minority and female students who intend to work for the department in professions identified by the department as having a significant statistical underrepresentation of minorities or women in the department's workforce. The programs provide the department's managers with a recruiting source for professional, ethnic and workforce diversity for long-range staffing goals by building an understanding of the department's career opportunities. In keeping with these policies and with the requirements of Texas Civil Statutes, Articles 6668a, 6668b, 6669a, and Education Code, Chapter 56, Subchapter I, this subchapter prescribes the policies and procedures by which the department selects students to participate in these programs.