This research provided understanding of the concept civic-minded professional. A civic-minded professional is one who is (a) skillfully trained through formal education, (b) with the ethical disposition as a social trustee of knowledge, and (c) the capacity to work with others in a democratic way, (d) to achieve public goods. Forty-four items were developed for the Civic-Minded Professional (CMP) scale based on a multi-disciplinary literature review (e.g., philosophy, political science, philanthropic studies). The CMP scale was part of an online survey distributed to a national sample of faculty in higher education (n=373) to evaluate the reliability (alpha=.95) and validity of the scale.

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) reduced the CMP scale to thirty-two items. EFA of the CMP-32 scale, together with prior conceptual analysis of the construct, provided a basis for identifying five factors. Four hypotheses were tested to evaluate the validity of the CMP-32 scale. In comparing faculty, Nominees for national awards (i.e., Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning, Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement ) scored higher on the three of the five CMP-32 factors (i.e., Voluntary Action, Citizenship, Social Trustee) than Non-Nominees. There was no significant difference between the two groups on two of the five factors (i.e., Identity and Calling, Consensus Building). Faculty who taught service learning classes scored higher on the CMP-32 scale than faculty who did not use this type of teaching strategy. Additionally, faculty who engaged in collaborative research projects in the community scored higher on the CMP-32 scale than faculty who did not use this type of research.

Empirical tests for convergent validity correlated scores from the CMP-32 with the (a) Civic Engagement Index (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, 2005), (b) items from the New England Research Center for Higher Education, and (c) Public Interest Subscale (Perry, 1996). Correlation was significant, p < .01, for each of the five factors of CMP with these measures.

The importance of this research lies in the future use of the CMP-32 scale in empirical research on the civic-dimensions of professionals by measuring civic-mindedness as either an independent or dependent variable.