ABSTRACT
In the middle decades of the twentieth century, psychologists launched one of the boldest reform movements in the history of American higher education. Early proponents called it "student personnel work". In the middle 1920s, Paterson was responsible for the committee that provided faculty advisers with guidance. He asked one of his graduate students, Edmund G. Williamson, first to serve as secretary to the faculty guidance committee and then to study the effectiveness of faculty advising systems for his doctoral dissertation. The American Council on Education (ACE) focus was no longer on promoting the implementation of student personnel services, but rather on ongoing discussion of the role of student personnel work among interested stake-holders within the university. The psychologist-administrators leading the student affairs movement, like Williamson, would have to carry the ball from here on their own. In potential, the student personnel or student affairs movement was a breathtaking reform.
