According to Miller, development is a natural extension of financial aid. He said he hopes his development work at Brown will make the school more accessible.

"[Brown is] a place that educated me on someone else's nickel," Miller said. "I feel a great deal of affection and a lot of loyalty to Brown...it's a great chance to do something new."

And Miller is leaving 20 years later than he originally planned.

He took his first Harvard job as an Admissions and Financial Aid Officer in 1978, intending to stay for only a year. Instead, he rose through the ranks of the office to become Director of Financial Aid in 1983. He was also a first-year proctor between 1979 and 1983.

"The contact with the students--it was the part of the Harvard job that I liked the most," Miller said. "Harvard gives people a sense of what's possible in their lives more than most places I've ever seen. When you see what happens to people over a long period of time, it's very gratifying."

Miller's colleagues said that as a senior financial administrator, he never forgot the human side of his position.

"Students just love Jim, and many adopt him as their guardian angel in the office," said Matthew J. DeGreeff '89, a senior admissions and financial aid officer. Both students and parents "connect with him because of his humor and openness and intelligence."