The use of the term career development as descriptive of both the factors and the processes influencing individual career behavior and as synonymous with intervention in career behavior (e.g., the practice of career development) is relativelyrecent. As professional vocabulary evolves across time, so do the form and substance of career interventions and those to whom they are directed. At the beginning ofthe new millennium, this article reviews the legacy of the 20th century and considers selected theoretical and practical issues likely to be prominent in the practice of career development in the decades immediately ahead.

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As reported in current research, many if not most freshmen and sophomores in colleges and universities who are declared as well as undeclared about their academic majors express uncertainty about their careers and lack the level of involvement in the career development process (especially self-assessment, career exploration, and career decision making) necessary to make educated career decisions. This research study, using both quantitative and qualitative research processes, identifies and examines differences and similarities in career uncertainty and in levels of involvement in the career development process between declared and undeclared college students.

Since the early 20th century, career counseling has been the object of public policy and legislation. As such, the important contributions of career counseling to labor market processes have reinforced the role of career counseling and related career interventions as sociopolitical instruments vital to the facilitation of national goals. The author discusses the interactions of career counseling and public policy; the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to such interactions; and selected strategic issues facing professional career counselors in the 21st century.

Individual behavior, career guidance theory and practice, and public policy are interdependent, and they are interactive with the characteristics of the ecological context. Each of these constructs is examined.

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Research and theory linking career development and mental health is relatively rare. For the most part, the focus of attention on career development has been on its structure and its changes over time, not on the relationship between career patterns and mental health. Yet, there is growing evidence that such relationships do exist and that the absence of work or underemployment are reflected in behaviors which suggest various problems in living or, indeed, mental illness. To the degree that such relationships exist, career counseling or career guidance become more than vocational or career in their orienration and impact. They, in fact, become, or have the potential of becoming, mental health modalities.With few exceptions, career counseling has been historically portrayed as significantly more oriented to economic health, to choice of an occupation, to the development of pre-vocational skills and the preparation for work than to the reduction of stress and other factors that put persons "at risk" of experiencing physical or mental disorders. Some observers have argued that career counseling and psychotherapy are separate, not overlapping processes or that problems persons experience can be classified into those for which personal counseling and those for which career counseling is appropriate.Traditional and restrictive views of the purpose and potential of career counseling are slowly changing in the face of growing evidence that career development and human development are connected; satisfaction or dissatisfaction in one of these forms of development affects the other. Thus, career counseling is increasingly seen as a critical ingredient in the process of reconnecting unemployed, under-