Professional Development Engagement

Abstract

Professional development engagement (PDE) is defined as “the level of perceived undergraduate engagement in professional development activities.” Current measures of student engagement do not adequately measure PDE. A promising PDE scale was utilized for a sample of senior-level business undergraduates. After controlling for student background/precollege variables and college-related variables sets, an organization-related variables set, followed by a motivation-related variables set, explained significant incremental variance in PDE. Specific variables with a significant positive relationship to PDE were joining a student professional organization, motivation to attend the business school, and career development center access ease and service quality.