Henry Rosovsky, the flamboyant and outspokenformer dean of the Faculty, guided FAS through thechanges of the 1970s and masterminded the creationof the Core Curriculum--an innovation which drewnational attention to Harvard's undergraduateprogram.

"I don't ever want to be dean, but if I everhad to be a dean, I would not want to be deanafter Henry Rosovsky," says Zeckhauser, whoadvised Spence on his Ph.D thesis and recruitedthe young scholar to teach at the Kennedy Schoolin the 1970s.

Spence himself admits that when he took overthe second-floor corner office in University Hallfive years ago, "It was a little frightening. Theywere quite big shoes to fill."

Particularly for Spence, who brought anunassuming personality to the deanship. In fact,some colleagues say his outward demeanor sometimesborders on the diffident.

R. Norman Wood '54, who coached Spence as avarsity hockey player at Princeton, says even inhis undergraduate days Spence was not one toattract attention to himself.

"He's not going to pound you on the back andput a cigar in your mouth," says Wood. "He's notthat type. He's all there."

Not a Headline-Maker

Spence has also taken a much less visibleapproach to the deanship than Rosovsky did.Instead of headline-maker Spence says he prefersto see his role as that of consensus-builder.

"I think of it as being a sort of workingpartner, somebody who discusses it and somebodywho, when it is needed, puts the resources behindthe initiative," Spence says.

Ozment says this ability to "harmonize a group"is the most important quality for a dean at aschool as tradition-bound as Harvard. "The lastthing you want to do is stand out as anindividual. Mike Spence has that special gift,that skill," says Ozment, who worked closely withSpence as a former associate dean forundergraduate education.

Indeed, his associates say Spence has created anew group of faculty insiders to help him grapplewith what he saw as the most pressing need of hisfirst few years: How to gather all the informationneeded to reassess the Faculty's direction.

"The first five years the institution isinvesting in the dean, and the payoff is notimmediate because there are a lot of things tolearn," says Associate Dean for Academic PlanningPhyllis Keller, one of Spence's chief assistants."And he has set out to learn them all, trying toeducate himself about what the needs of theCollege are, really to the end of the century."

Spence now says that the first few years wereformative in his concept of the deanship.

"I didn't have a good sense of how big thefaculty was, of where the staff was. I didn't havea good sense of our finances, I didn't have a goodsense of what the needs were," says Spence. "Ididn't have an operating plan in financialterms...I'm quite determined that my successorwill have all of that available."

So, Spence says he has assembled a network ofsenior faculty members who have a permanentworking knowledge of FAS's administrative side.Over the course of his first five years, Spencehas strengthened the role of department chairs,added several academic deanships and brought moreprofessors into the planning process.