Carnesale is "a great father," Kimberly said, adding that her father made time to meet her for lunch when she was an undergraduate.

The dean's unquestioned gift for leading an academic institution drew Rudenstine to Carnesale, colleagues said.

"Al Carnesale is an enormously able and gifted administrator," IBM Professor of Business and Government Roger B. Porter said last spring.

He brought the Kennedy School closer to the rest of the University and united the disciplines, as well as the faculty and staff, colleagues said.

"He doesn't polarize people," Dean of the Graduate School of Education Jerome T. Murphy said last spring. "He brings them together."

"He has the capacity to make people feel as if their work is important," Murphy added.

Carnesale's own explanation of administrative ability could come out of a textbook for cooperative corporate management.

"When you have faculty, staff and students of the caliber that we're fortunate enough to have, you don't tell them what to do," Carnesale says. "It's your responsibility and obligation to try to convince them that what you're suggesting makes sense and they ought to give it a try."

Steady

But Carnesale is good with more than just fragile egos, interviews showed.

Colleagues have said that he is a decisive, articulate thinker who still manages to step on no one's toes.

"He doesn't leave issues open and stirring tension," Pratt Public Service Professor Lewis M. Branscomb said last spring. "He's just awfully good at providing a steady leadership."

That pragmatism might have something to do with Carnesale's academic background, which he makes a point of belittling.

A native of Bronx, N.Y., Carnesale received his bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering from Cooper Union, his master's in nuclear engineering from Drexel University and his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from North Carolina State.

Carnesale says he was not a "serious student" in his undergraduate days.