"Putnam did not like the job of being dean and that really disturbed the faculty," Thompson says. "For two years we really didn't know where we were going."

And by 1991, just two years after assuming the deanship, Putnam was ready to abandon it to return to teaching and research.

Carnesale Arrives

It was in November 1991 that Carnesale took over, promising a "new phase of consolidation" for the Kennedy School.

His work was cut out for him in the rudderless institution.

"The next dean has an opportunity to set the direction for the next 10 years," Hale Champion, lecturer in public policy, said at the time.

And, according to many at the Kennedy School, Carnesale, in just three years, made huge strides toward healing the school's wounds and unifying the divided faculty.

He raised faculty morale, helped integrate Kennedy School programs into the rest of the University and worked to make the school's curriculum more cohensive, faculty say.

"During the transition before Carnesale, the faculty was a little unhappy. Carnesale had the confidence of all the various people," Thompson says. "That kind of confidence is hard to recreate."

Carnesale was also a success in the crucial area of faculty recruitment. Colleagues credit him with increasing faculty diversity at the Kennedy School, Which has long had a problem drawing women and minorities.

According to the University's most recent affirmative action report, "The Kennedy School has achieved significant gains in the number of women and minorities on the overall faculty in the past five years."

"We've begun some major searches. One is still going on for distinguished people, "Thompson says.

"Rather than trying to fill spots, Carnesale identified a general 'we wanted to get very good people,": he adds. "You're more likely to get women and minorities that way, because you're looking for the very best people."

The worries raised by the rapid succession of deans were soothed under Carnesale's steady leadership, professor say.

"We are a school that has had a lot of uncertainty," Lawrence says. "We'd not only had a rotation of deans, we'd finally found the right one."