A project entitled "Academic Presentations and Publications by Leaders in Education" (Project APPLE) was developed to offer pre-service teachers opportunities to grow professionally outside traditional coursework requirements. Project APPLE seeks to engage students in teacher education programs in two types of scholarly activities: professional conference presentations (Phase A) and publications (Phase B). This article describes the project's goals and evaluates Phase A of the project. Practical suggestions are presented to develop professional development projects in teacher education programs that wish to promote early student engagement in scholarly activities. (Contains 1 figure.)