Professional Development Engagement

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.