This monograph reviews the impact of the freshman year and the four years of undergraduate study on a central dimension of personal development: the formation of character and its progression from late adolescence to young adulthood. A foreword by Nevitt Sanford places the discussion in the context of a general loss by American universities of concern for larger issues, such as community and moral values, and their replacement during the post-Sputnik era by a techno-scientific approach to knowledge. A significant portion of the empirical data reported in this monograph comes from the Sierra Project, a curriculum intervention and longitudinal research study which had its origins at the University of California, Irvine. The historical obstacles which are seen as contributing to the general problem of determining how to go about developing character through higher education programs are discussed, and the manner in which each of these obstacles has been addressed in the Sierra Project provides a six-point rationale for the project. The Sierra Project assessed the growth of character both during the freshman year and over four years of undergraduate study, using a Sierra experimental group and two control groups. In discussing results, the differential effects of a character education curriculum over the freshman year are examined, as well as the central implications for undergraduate and for higher education as a whole of rethinking the context for promoting personal development in the freshman year. Contains 33 references. (GLR)