“He has a deep appreciation for the role faculty members can play in the life of students—he knows how important it’s been in his career,” Summers’ brother John says. “It’s a favor he wants to return.”

Golden remembers that as a tutor, Summers spent hours in the dining hall, discussing students’ lives, debating politics, or helping with economics. “His door was always open,” Golden said (adding that Summers’ room was always a “complete mess” and the floor generally invisible under “laundry, papers and the occasional stale pizza”).

“Even then he was incredibly busy. Everybody wanted him, every student wanted to spend time with him. He’d talk to everybody if it meant staying late, talking on the phone from home, staying on Saturday,” says David M. Cutler ’87.

But more than any advice Summers gave, or kicks in the pants that he administered, his role as a mentor is best seen in terms of the coterie of devotees whose careers he gave tangible jumpstarts. Meeting up with Summers at some point early in their careers, either as thesis advisees or graduate tutees, these students and friends have later scored jobs at the World Bank, Treasury or elsewhere in Washington based on his recommendations. This is not a coattail effect, observers say, but rather an example of how Summers recognized existing talent, and provided the opportunities or it to flourish.

The stories are like that of Sheryl K. Sandberg ’91, whose thesis was advised by Summers. After attending Harvard Business School, she went to work with Summers at the World Bank and was tapped once more at the Treasury, where she rose to be his Chief of Staff. There is Gruber, the Economics 1410 teaching fellow who was asked by Summers to be a deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury. Or Brad DeLong, whose teacher-student relationship with Summers also eventually became one between Treasury Department colleagues.

All of his finds are incredibly loyal, and grateful for the opportunities Summers provided. All say Summers would find a way to continue to interact with students, and is uniquely qualified to tackle the problem of student-faculty interaction.

While Summers might have the perspective, it is never an easy proposition to implement change. Officials said that not everyone present at the first meeting with Summers took well to his aggressive stance on the problem of undergraduate advising—after all, had they been sitting on their hands all this time? Summers agrees that he might not have all the solutions immediately. “Many of these issues are long-term,” Summers said. “It’s not appropriate for me to say I’m arriving with silver bullets. I do hope that over time we can effect change.”

Nor is it easy to maintain contact with students on any wide-scale level. Rudenstine, for example, is seen as distant at best. Nonetheless, Summers will try his hand at it. “I hope that I will not become a remote figure,” he says, adding that spending time with students was “one of the great attractions to coming back.”