For months, Harvard was all talk.

Administrators spoke ominously of an impending fiscal crisis, dire warnings were issued in University-wide letters, and officials threw around numbers that spelled out a challenge greater than any that had confronted the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in decades.

But it remained in the background until last month, when the first round of cuts across the University’s largest school drew outrage from constituents who felt as though the real talk—which led to $77 million in cutbacks—had happened behind closed doors.

Even before the uproar—particularly strong among students, who criticized what they viewed as uninformed cuts to areas such as shuttle service and hot breakfast—some in FAS were beginning to agitate for greater transparency.

“We’re all partners in this enterprise,” Government Professor Robert D. Putnam told Michael D. Smith, the leader of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at a town hall meeting in April. “And I think, at least, as one of the partners among the many partners, I would like to know a little more about how we got to where we are.”

It’s a question left hanging over the Faculty, as its leadership struggles to confront an unprecedented budgetary quagmire. The concern reverberates all the more as the school finds itself in the hands of unseasoned administrators—unfamiliar with the sort of fiscal magicking needed to unite a disparate and confused Faculty behind deep budget cuts.

In a projected era of dramatic restructuring, Smith, FAS Dean for Administration and Finance Brett C. Sweet, and Harvard Executive Vice President Edward C. Forst ’82 have yet to fully define what this means for the Faculty. And mounting uncertainty over the past year has unnerved them.

“We can gather ideas, input, and ensure the community understands the extent of the financial challenge,” Smith wrote in an e-mail to a student who requested anonymity to preserve relations with the administration, “but there will always be a part of this process that must occur thoughtfully and quietly behind closed doors.”

THE COMMUNICATOR

Not even the worst financial crisis could convince Michael D. Smith to forgo his usual morning work-out sessions. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences wakes up well before 5 a.m., and generally warns against e-mailing him past his usual bedtime of 10 p.m. A computer scientist by training, Smith is all discipline, method, and very little madness.

This is the man who, upon being named dean, needed multiple meetings with his predecessor David R. Pilbeam to review a sheet of paper with a list of items Pilbeam thought would require particular attention. But Smith didn’t want the crash course in deanship to stop there.

“We went over my calendar,” Pilbeam recalls of an early encounter with Smith prior to his appointment. “He’d say, ‘What’s that? What’s that meeting? What do you do here? Who’s involved here?’”

But when Smith hit his second year, the answers came far less easily. The deanship of the Faculty has become “one of the most unenviable jobs in the world,” says History of Art and Architecture Professor Jeffrey F. Hamburger, an outspoken regular at Faculty meetings. With the financial crisis rocking a school accustomed to expansion, it became increasingly clear that cutting coffee and cookies from afternoon meetings would do little to save the strapped FAS budget.

In April, Smith unveiled “reshaping”—a general charge to implement broad structural changes that have yet to be determined. The news came a few weeks after the University announced in mid-March that the endowment payout—the school’s chief source of revenue—would fall by more than 15 percent over the next two years. “Reshaping” had replaced “resizing” (what happened to the coffee at afternoon meetings) as the new buzzword. The concept arose organically from University-wide discussions, Harvard President Drew G. Faust says, but the word ultimately came from Smith. “Do you like it or not?” Smith asked during a recent interview.

Coining the argot that would come to pervade discussions over the past few months is not foreign territory for Smith, whose habit of careful wording often frustrates Faculty members seeking meaning behind the lingo.

When asked to clarify the term “reshaping,” Smith repeatedly turns to the Faculty, casting his non-answer as an opportunity for professors—particularly those in the working groups—to propose “innovative” solutions for the remaining $143 million deficit. When asked to explain the growth of the administration in the past few years, Smith reverts to stock optimism: “I’m a very forward-looking person,” he says. When asked to comment on budget plans that could impact a particular group of people, Smith responds by simply affirming his commitment to supporting them.

“It’s not been transparent,” said a professor who requested anonymity to preserve his relationship with the University. “As a result, a lot of the faculty think that it has been less than thoughtful so far.”

The administration’s vague responses and deflections may reflect a lack of any current plan. “I don’t think there’s some big proposal sitting in the wings that is the secret strategy for solving our budget shortfalls,” says Allan M. Brandt, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

But the absence of any clear directive has cast doubt on Smith’s own grasp of the situation. “The Dean doesn’t exactly know himself what this ‘reshaping’ will mean,” said Classics Department Chair John M. Duffy, calling Smith’s dialect “a visionary approach without exactly having a vision.”

“The process can work much more efficiently if we have a greater sense of the vision of the leaders of the University on what their large priorities are,” says former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68. “To really make large scale changes, I think you need a somewhat stronger hand—a stronger hand that’s informed and consultative.”

With just two years of mid-level administrative experience at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences under his belt, the former Associate Dean for Computer Science and Engineering has been tasked with a charge of unfamiliar magnitude. Prior to his appointment, Smith was less than publicly active in Faculty affairs; he says he attended meetings “when appropriate.” But Smith wasn’t planning on exploding onto the scene anyway.

“He has the soul of a swimmer,” Lewis says of the Princeton graduate, who swam for his alma mater and regularly swims to this day. “He has a very low heart rate, he does not get excited, and he’s extremely steady, deliberate, and non-reactive.” As Pilbeam observes of Smith, “You rarely see him in any mode other than calm.”

For some, Smith’s unflappable nature is a steadying force in the midst of a financial maelstrom. Faust praised her handpicked dean as one whose guiding hand has been “very steady at a time that has been one of great pressure.” Unfazed even as students and staff noisily protested outside the windows of University Hall during the year’s last Faculty meeting, the computer science professor has a distinctively scientific—perhaps even stoic—approach to the difficulties of the budgetary crisis.

“He’s hard to read,” Lewis says. “I’ve never seen him angry, I’ve never seen him impatient.”

It’s a demeanor reflected in Smith’s former life as co-founder of the software company Liquid Machines, where co-founder Arny Epstein says Smith approached challenges in a measured, methodical way. At the last Faculty meeting, Smith compared the problem of closing the FAS deficit to “what I see when I’m designing an engineering problem.”

“He’s an engineer, so he comes at problems very deliberately,” says Computer Science Professor and former colleague J. Greg Morrisett. “He tries to understand the problems and the constraints and optimize and work with the best solution.”

Although every budgetary plan eventually “rolls up” to Smith’s office for final review, his purview is much too vast to allow much attention to details. “I did not go through all the different proposals from all the different units. That would be crazy,” Smith said in an interview last week, about proposals for cuts sent in by units over the past few months. Instead, he focuses on recommendations flagged as “affecting multiple units” or with far-reaching consequences.

“You have people who work with you and work for you so you don’t have to literally know absolutely everything,” Pilbeam says about the role of FAS dean. “But you certainly have to give the impression you do.”

As the leader of over 20,000 people, Smith is less of a micro-manager, and more of a communicator—working to present a coherent message for a disparate community.

“The role of a dean certainly has a public face to it. You have to represent the faculty to the outside world,” Pilbeam says. “Ultimately, what you say and how you say it is yours.”

After the University learned that the endowment had fallen a precipitous 22 percent in December, Smith devoted the bulk of the two subsequent Faculty meetings to explaining the looming budgetary shortfall with powerpoints and hand-written figures—a function that professors came to expect in their dean.

But after two years at the helm, the honeymoon phase has passed, and there is growing impatience at the vagueness “reshaping” has come to represent. “There are a lot of open questions at this point,” Hamburger says. “I wish Dean Smith well.”

THE WINGMAN

Smith needed advice.

Faced with an endowment in free fall in late October, he arranged a meeting with former FAS Dean Henry Rosovsky, who had once weathered a recession of his own at the FAS helm. Smith brought one person with him.

Brett C. Sweet remains unknown to many professors and staff, but the FAS dean for administration and finance has gained attention in tandem with the increasing fiscal pressures. Smith first called attention to his financial guru at the November Faculty meeting: he had asked “Brett Sweet and others” to research Harvard’s coping mechanisms during past recessions. In a rare moment of uncertainty at the next meeting, Smith stopped mid-thought to double-check a fact with Sweet, who sat on the sidelines. “Yes,” Sweet quietly affirmed, nodding.

Though new to Harvard, Sweet is not unfamiliar with university finance, arriving on campus in 2008 after serving as executive vice president for administration and finance at Baylor College of Medicine. Sweet stepped into a redefined executive dean’s position that had previously been held on an interim basis. But he had barely enough time to adjust to his new office in University Hall before he had to add the fiscal fate of the Faculty to the top of his to-do list.

While department heads scrambled to draft proposals for 15 percent cuts in their budgets in accordance with a December directive from Smith, the former cryptographic researcher emerged from the frenzy of the financial uncertainty as the “point person,” the man tasked with setting fiscal policies to close a gaping deficit. Sweet—who often flanks Smith in various meetings with FAS administrative deans—knows the numbers well enough to tell units how particular proposals for budget cuts will save, or perhaps even cost money.

“He was all about the impact,” says Robert G. Doyle, FAS Associate Dean, who sends the budgets for the five administrative units under his purview directly to Sweet. “Brett Sweet is concerned about the impact of the reductions that he and others recommend, but it is Mike Smith who is the bottom line.”

Since Smith warned the Faculty of severe budget reductions, Sweet has been advising the individual departments and centers through the budget planning process by providing guidance in line with fiscal recommendations from central administration, according to Brandt.

Described by Kimberly C. David—Baylor’s vice president of finance and planning who worked closely with him—as “very driven” and “a roll-up-the-sleeves guy,” Sweet’s intensity is apparent in his work today. “He packs a lot into a conversation, but he listens at the same speed,” says Nancy M. Cline, head administrator of Harvard College Library. “He puts an awful lot into a very short amount of time.”

Carolyn Sweet remembers her son in his pre-Naval Academy years as a “curious” boy with a penchant for mathematics. Sweet, who graduated second in his high school class, was always a bit precocious for his peers: “I said, ‘Remember, you’ve got to have patience because things that come easy for you, don’t come easy for most of us,’” Carolyn Sweet recalls telling her son. Once in the Navy, the Sioux City, Iowa native served as a nuclear submarine officer and sang in the Navy choir, once even performing for Queen Elizabeth, Mrs. Sweet says.

Though Sweet’s mother says her son often keeps in touch, she notes that he is careful to keep quiet details of his job at Harvard, explaining that there are “things that are relatively private in his job—he keeps it that way, so there’s a lot we probably don’t know.”

It’s an attitude evident in interactions with the press. In one instance, Sweet falsely accused two Crimson reporters of breaking into the FAS finance office. “This is bigger than your student newspaper,” he said of the importance of keeping budgetary information confidential. “This is bigger than an individual town.”

THE LIAISON

Edward C. Forst ’82 may not be known for his intimidating stature, but it has proved useful fodder for his self-effacing sense of humor.

“Don’t ask me to stand up,” he quipped at his 20th reunion dinner, when he rose from his chair to make a toast. “I’m standing up,” he assured the audience.

Harvard’s first executive vice president arrived last September fresh from 26 years on Wall Street and brought a personal charm to a position that would require great collaboration across the historically decentralized University. “He has a great sense of humor—very disarming in that way,” says the University’s Chief Financial Officer Daniel S. Shore of his colleague.

Forst, who “hit the ground running” in June before his official start date, soon became one of Faust’s closest advisers, University Provost Steven E. Hyman says of his “administrative twin.” In the newly created role of EVP, Forst was responsible for managing Harvard’s finance, administration, and human resources offices—all of which previously reported directly to the President. And Forst—as well as his financial expertise—has proven invaluable to Faust over the past year, as he accompanies her to meetings with deans at the various schools and leads difficult but necessary conversations about Harvard’s financial state.

“Every single day is about serving the President,” Forst says, leaning across the table, his eyes bright in earnestness. “We were quickly in the middle of this financial crisis—that’s not something that we really thought was happening in the world, let alone happening at Harvard, when Drew hired me in June.”

News of his plans to step down due to a self-stated desire to return to Wall Street came as a surprise to both administrators and faculty across the University last week. “I was surprised and disappointed,” Faust says. “But I understood.”

In just less than a year, Forst, who formerly served as Goldman Sachs’ chief administrative officer, had refinanced Harvard’s capital structure to reduce the University’s risk in its investment strategies. From his vantage point in Mass. Hall, Forst—described as “data-driven” by Christine M. Heenan, the University’s vice president for government, community, and public affairs—was able to identify inefficiencies in the University’s administrative system and consolidate University-wide procurement of resources, Shore says. Perhaps his years leading Goldman’s investment management division had shaped his way of thinking about cutting costs or, as he puts it, “investing smarter.” Shore notes that Forst saved $4 million just from negotiating better prices from outside vendors. “The process of challenging ourselves and reshaping our landscape—that’s new for us,” Forst says. “There are some things we can do smarter.”

Such knowledge has proven pivotal in Forst’s working relationship with Sweet, Forst’s counterpart in FAS. Forst says he meets every day with his own finance team or those at other schools across the University—and his meetings with Sweet and Smith have become particularly formative for a school currently struggling to develop a plan for revamping its administrative and programmatic structure. “I think the two of them have an extremely good working relationship,” Smith says of the financial duo.

Since Forst arrived at Harvard, Faust and the Harvard Corporation—the University’s chief governing body—have relied on his financial acumen and ability to reach out to the schools, and Faculty members have taken note of his high visibility. A regular at both social functions and meetings with high-level administrators, Forst describes his style as a “much more ‘pick up the phone and talk to people’—as there’s a real-time need to do that.” In response to Forst’s imminent departure, Lewis, the former College Dean, remarked, “His leaving seems to create a big hole for the President.”

Raised in Beverly, a middle-class neighborhood in Chicago, Forst “never did anything terribly wildly unusual,” his mother Ann Thole recalls of his early years. A graduate of an all-boys Catholic high school in downtown Chicago, Forst was the editor of the high school newspaper who exhibited “quiet leadership,” according to high school friend Peter Wuertz. Described by his three closest high school friends as the social planner of the group, Forst would later become president of the final club D.U. (which would eventually merge with the Fly) at Harvard and then serve as co-chair for his 20th and 25th reunions years, cultivating a reputation as a Harvard loyalist.

“He was always just somebody who was very engaged in community, regardless of whether it was high school in Chicago or Harvard in Cambridge,” says David F. Sally ’82, who grew up with Forst in Chicago.

His uncanny ability to win people over stemmed from a genuine kindness fondly recalled by his close friends. His mother remembers Forst writing a letter to Notre Dame after having been accepted, begging the school to give his spot to a good friend who had been rejected. (“I don’t think he ever got a response,” she adds.)

“He was a straight shooter,” Wuertz says, “a no-BS kind of guy.”

Forst’s mother would agree—except for the one rare instance in which he set off a firecracker in his bedroom by accident when home alone. “It burned through the carpeting,” she remembers. “He told me that it was the lady who cleaned the house and left the vacuum on to cause the wool to evaporate.”

“I did not buy it,” she adds.

THE DECIDERS

As the dust settles after campus-wide uproar following Smith’s announcement last month of deep budget cuts amounting to $77 million, faculty, students, and staff have grown increasingly concerned about the next step—which promises to have an even greater impact.

With $143 million left to cut over the next two years, many have begun to demand greater transparency in a process of downsizing that took constituents by surprise in its breadth and magnitude last month.

But while administrators have formed working groups to gather input, and prominently flagged a “Web resource” to communicate most, but not all, of the cutbacks, decisions regarding the next round of cuts appear likely to again be purview of the few.

“It would be most helpful to really know what the priories of the leadership are—where they consider some things untouchable and other things less valuable,” Lewis says. “Its very hard for anybody who’s not on the inside to imagine where you can save large amounts of money without knowing how much things cost.”

—Bonnie J. Kavoussi contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer June Q. Wu can be reached at junewu@fas.harvard.edu. —Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.