"He was a very good teacher and a good mentor to graduate students and undergraduates," Lewis said. "He really seems to understand the full range of the mission of the University, and that's incredibly important."

The praise Summers has received from former students constitutes "the best kind of recommendation" one can receive, Lewis added in an e-mail.

And perhaps Summers--once an Ec10 teaching fellow--may bring a unique perspective to academic issues like class size.

As a member of the economics faculty, Summers taught in a department which now suffers from a very high student-faculty ratio and low marks for undergraduate advising.

Lewis has been particularly critical of the state of advising in the economics department.

Christopher L. Foote, the department's director of undergraduate studies, said the department hopes to improve student satisfaction by offering more courses, thereby cutting class size and encouraging student-faculty interaction.

One way to do this, of course, would be to hire more faculty, a solution that has long been championed by many in the University. The president must approve all tenure decisions, and any move to dramatically increase the size of the Faculty would be a costly venture requiring strong central administration support.