During the early 1980s significant thinking was advanced in the literature of higher education defining and promulgating a developmental approach to academic advising. Ender, Winston, and Miller (1982) defined developmental advising as a relationship between a student and an advisor that: both stimulates and supports students in their quest for an enriched quality of life.... It is a systematic process based on a close studentadvisor relationship intended to aid students in achievement of educational and personal goals through the utilization of the full range of institutional and community resource.(p. 8)

Rationales and strategies for implementation of this approach were advanced and many educators concluded that a developmental approach to advising would bring new meaning and enrichment to the academy (Winston, Miller, Ender, Grites, & Associates, 1984). Primarily, developmental advising was advocated as a strategy to enrich and assist students as they made meaning of the collegiate experience. In systematic ways, faculty and other academic advising providers were to assist students as they discovered their best" personal fit" between the college curriculum and life purpose. Throughout matriculation, goals and objectives would be developed and evaluated on an ongoing basis and students would use the full range of academic and cocurricular resources to reach goal achievement. The implementation of these key principles for successful and purposeful living was thought of as advancing the developmental nature of higher education as it nurtures human growth. There was an acknowledgment through this approach that learners are always in the process of becoming and the college campus, with its many resources, is an ideal environment to stimulate and support human growth and maturation.