When Business School student Michael Hren and 80 members of his first-year section found problems with their Management Communications class, they decided to send criticism where they thought it would prove most effective-straight to the top.

The letter ultimately led to changes in the course, but Hren's section was also given a reminder of just how far removed the top--in the form of B-School Dean John H. McArthur--can be.

"You'd think we damn near burned down the school," says Hren. "We were sent a letter that slapped our hands, basically telling us, "Don't skip the chain of command and send a letter to the "CEO.'"

At most graduate schools, a dean oversees the institution's academic and administrative life. At the B-School, however, the figure of a concerned leader deeply involved in the daily life of the school yielded to a persona better suited to the business world than academia: to both students and faculty, McArthur is not simply the school's dean--he is its chief executive officer.

During his tenure McArthur has overseen dramatic transformation at the Business School. At the time of his appointment in 1980 the B-School's stature, both at Harvard and elsewhere, had come under fire. Critics included President Derek C. Bok, who issued a report questioning the school's academic structure and its treatment of ethical issues.

The school has now gained renewed respect, bolstered by a $240 million endowment and new programs in fields such as entrepreneurial studies and ethics. McArthur's role in engineering this change and maintaining it on a day-to-day basis has been perceived differently by students and faculty.

McArthur has been praised by B-School professors and administrators as an innovator and consensus builder, eager to promote creativity among professors without forcing his own academic agenda.

But students have characterized the dean as inaccessible and detached from student life, concerned with promoting the B-School and leaving much of its actual management to other administrators.

"In the traditional model of dean you would find something to do with students--but that's not what [McArthur's] here for," says first-year student Barry Johnson. "He's not accessible by any stretch. McArthur's not a howdy-doody, hand-shaking, walking-around-the-campus kind of dean."

Both faculty and students agree in their characterization of McArthur as the model corporate figure whose role--the CEO--is delineated daily within the school's case studies. For better or for worse, he does what is necessary to run the great MBA factory across the river--promoting growth through his executives and middle managers, but rarely fraternizing with the workers.

"McArthur is just not part of life here," says one second-year student. "I guess he's accessible if you put in enough effort but he doesn't affect life here."

McArthur declined to be interviewed for this article, and he has repeatedly refused to speak to The Crimson.

Breakfasts with each of the nine second-year class sections are arranged by the dean each year, say second-year students; but even then McArthur's diffidence and reluctance to speak in public sometimes counteracts his cursory efforts to establish direct communication with students.

"We had breakfast one day with the dean, but he doesn't mingle well," says second-year student Edward Schmults. "He sat in the corner talking with some administrative guy the entire time."

Where students find McArthur distant, however, B-School faculty laud him as responsive to faculty concerns and as a champion of innovation within the graduate school's often static curriculum.