If Lewis has come to pursue more gradual projects in a more patient fashion, some say this is to be expected.

Sweeping changes and protests, Epps suggests, are unusual events.

"College life is usually this way," Epps says.

Indeed, Harvard has a history of deans of the College who implement sweeping changes early in their terms. Fox restructured the housing system, ending upperclass housing in the Yard, during his first semester as dean. And Ernest R. May--who served as Dean of the College for just two years--had to deal with the tensions of the 1969 University Hall takeover from his first day on the job.

Fox suggests it is typical for administrators to spend some time playing preserver or slowly implementing policy rather than always trying to innovate.

"There isn't necessarily a single style to a single executive," Fox says. "Most people in responsible positions have to have several different ways of contributing to the agency or whatever they're responsible for."

"He was very active at the outset," Fox adds. "He may be active again after the glass on Radcliffe clears."

Three Quiet Years

Lewis, however, says he has not changed his goals or focus since he assumed the position of Dean of the College. And of the initiatives he outlined in the Maull-Lewis report just before entering the deanship, the most controversial issues were dealt with early on.

Over the past three years, he has spent much of his time working on some of the less dramatic recommendations of the report.

"He did take that report to be a tentative plan for what he's done," Maull says.

"He's been very self-conscious about, in some of his work, taking the recommendations of that report--trying them out, testing them, seeing if they work," she adds.

Lewis wrote in an e-mail message that the report "wasn't a blueprint of a checklist, but few people could have ever gone into an office like this with more detailed notice of how their minds work!"

Both Maull and Lewis point to some of his initiatives not discussed in the report--the status of women in the College and the appropriate place of athletics at Harvard, for example. But these, too, have been gradual initiatives which have had little direct impact on most undergraduates.

Still, while Lewis' recent pursuits lack what he calls "the lightning rod quality" of his early work, some say they helped restructure the administration for the better.