His career aspirations in engineering changed in graduate school, when he started to focus on government.

It was a trip to Washington, D.C. in the late 1960s that changed his mind about his vocation. Carnesale was in the capital to work on safeguards for the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

"Within a matter of days, I was asked if I would be interested in working on the first strategic arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union," he says. "I thought that it would be interesting even though I knew nothing about foreign policy at the time. And I said, 'Yes,' and it changed my life."

But Carnesale says he missed the university environment. So he returned to North Carolina State, leaving in 1974 to become a professor at the Kennedy School.

Even during his years as a professor, Carnesale was never just an academic. He maintained his ties to Washington, serving as an advisor to every administration since Nixon's.

And by 1981, he had entered the Harvard bureaucracy as the Kennedy School's academic dean, a position he held for the next decade.

Carnesale was named dean of the Kennedy School in 1991, after Price Professor of Politics Robert D. Putnam stepped down.

Provost

The acting president has barely had time to finish making renovations to the provost's office, which he inherited less than six months ago.

Carnesale said last May that he would also serve as Rudenstine's advisor and mop-up man--a pronouncement that seems a bit ironic now.

"I should be doing those things which if I did not do them, either President Rudenstine would have to do them or they would go undone," Carnesale says. "My job is to try to be as helpful as I can be to the president in the multitude of responsibilities that he has."

Carnesale has been traveling occasionally this fall to carry out another of the provost's tasks, raising funds and schmoozing potential donors for the ongoing $2.1 billion capital campaign.

As acting president, he will presumably take on even more fundraising duties--an area in which that Carnesale is skilled, Rudenstine said last fall.

"A good deal of what you do [in the capital campaign] is explaining." Rudenstine says. "He's a good explicator and he's been very involved in the process."

'Doesn't Polarize'