African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation and Dance (AJPHERD)Volume 18, No. 4(2), (December), 2012, pp. 885-899. The influence of student internship work experience on their self- improvement and professionalism in Sport Management R. CHINOMONA AND J. SURUJLAL Faculty of Management Sciences, Vaal University of Technology, Private Bag X021, Vanderbijlpark 1900, South Africa. E-mail: babs@vut.ac.za (Received: 31 August 2012; Revision accepted: 5 October 2012) Abstract One of the major reasons provided for advocating for student internship has been the promise that it improves students in terms of practical orientation while at the same time providing for the acquisition of professionalism required in a specific field of expertise. Scant research attention has been given on this matter in the context of Sport Management in South Africa. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to fill this void by examining the influence of students’ internship work experience on their professionalism and the mediating role of students’ self-improvement in this relationship from a mentor perspective. Three hypotheses were formulated and data from a sample 144 mentors were collected to empirically test these hypotheses. The results showed that students’ internship work experience positively influence both their self-improvement and professionalism in a significant way. Implications of the findings are discussed and future research direction suggested. Keywords: Internship, student work experience, student self-improvement, professionalism, sport. How to cite this article: Chinomona, R. & Surujlal, J. (2012). The influence of student internship work experience on their self-improvement and professionalism in Sport Management. African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation and Dance, 18(4:2), 885-899. Introduction Every student is, at some stage of his/her academic life, faced with the task of transforming the theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom to the practical skills required in a profession (Jaschinski & De Villiers, 2008). To fulfil this task, most academic programmes at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a compulsory work integrated learning (WIL) component. One of the ways in which WIL is implemented is through experiential learning in the form of internships. In the past decade, the interest in using student internship at work as part of experiential learning has increased drastically. The value of student experiential learning through internship has become widely recognized and accepted in both the public and private sector (Surujlal & Singh, 2010). Internships are praised by scholars as a way for undergraduates to gain real-life work experience