Behind Every Great Harvard Professor

After 33 years, her routine is the same. In the morning, she walks through millennia-dead invertebrates to reach her desk. She sits down, checks the phone messages, picks up faxes and reads the batches of e-mail messages that have arrived overnight.

Most of the communication is not intended for her--or so the senders think. They are addressed to Stephen J. Gould, Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology.

But Agnes H. Pilot, Gould's staff assistant, is as close as many get to the professor himself.

By any name--secretary, staff assistant, executive assistant or just plain old assistant--Pilot and a small army of Harvard employees help keep sane and wise many of the world's most famous academics.

These are privileged jobs, because being in close contact with such savants on a daily basis requires mutual trust. Scholarly secrets and personal foibles must be guarded.

It is also rewarding, the assistants say, because each day is different--and because the professors seem genuinely thankful for their help.

Last of The Species

33 years ago, when Pilot began to work for Gould, most professors wrote out manuscripts longhand. Secretaries would type them up afterwards. "It took a lot of concentration to type a whole page of a paper perfectly. If I made single mistake, I had to start the page again," Pilot says.

Big-name professors often had multiple assistants to handle just that one task. Now, most professors type their own manuscripts on a computer.

For Buttenweiser University Professor Stanley H. Hoffman, though, the info-tech revolution has yet to come.

Jacqueline A. Brown, his assistant, still takes letters in shorthand while Hoffman dictates. And she types the manuscripts that he writes in long hand.

"We must be the last of the species to do it that way," Brown says.

Hoffman says has no plans to changes his routines.

"I am a dinosaur. I am too old to change," Hoffman says. "In my next life, maybe I will use a computer. It's too later for this one."

But Brown's role is far more important than doing occasional grunt work.

"She serves as my memory and as my organizer," Hoffman says.

Too Much To Do

The roles of the assistant have expanded and remain as vital as ever, says Porter University Professor Helen H. Vendler.

Vendler ticks off some of the tasks she delegates to her assistants: putting together course packs and handouts for classes, conducting library searches and retrievals for her classes and even a bit of scholarly research.

Often ignored is the vital task of filing, she says.

"We all get millions of pieces of paper. Something has to be done with them. We all write millions of pieces of papers, including student references. We are engaged in a lot of correspondence because everybody writes to people who teach at Harvard," she says. "Something has to be done with all of it."

"These tasks take time away from the basic work of reading, thinking, writing and talking to students in and out of class," Vendler says. "It's a waste of resources. It doesn't take somebody paid at my rate to do filing."

For professors with multiple appointments, assistants often function as chiefs of staff.

Janetta C. Randolph is the executive assistant to Peter J. Gomes, who, at once, is Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at the Divinity School, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and all-around University conscience.

"One of the things I do is to see that the left hand and the right hand know what's going on, and see how I cut down on confusion," Randolph says, speaking about the rest of the personnel in Gomes's office.

Paths to the Ivory Tower

Randolph says that she came to the job through dual interests in spirituality and education.

"I come from a background of two interests: the importance of the lives of students and the roles of religion in that life," she says.

Randolph and her husband--a dean at the MIT--also serve as house masters at the prestigious school down the river.

Kelly O'Brien, Vendler's assistant, says she took the job for several reasons.

"I wanted to have a job where I could see what it's like to be a professor. I may want to do that [as a career]," she says. "I get a better picture of how a department works, that I wouldn't know if I wasn't here."

O'Brien takes advantage of her job's tuition benefits by pursuing a degree in history at the Extension School.

Despite her job with Vendler in the Department of English and American Literature, O'Brien says she does not want to be an English professor.

"I find it interesting, but it's not my cup of tea," she says.

Instead, O'Brien's long range plans may include teaching history or women's studies.

Jacqueline Brown's job was born of necessity.

"I am not a scholar at all," she says. "I was at the Middle East Center. I am European and my boss-to-be needed a French speaker. And it was a perfect match."

When Pilot first was hired by what was then called the Meteorology department 35 years ago, she couldn't have cared less about the subject.

But after years of working with Gould in the paleontology wing, the subject matter began to grow on her.

She recalls one experience many years ago when she had the "mind-boggling" summer task of cataloging all the scientific articles they had received by subject.

"I was reading how the Himalayas were formed, when the Indian plate moved up in onto Gondwanaland," Pilot says. "I was just fascinated, and I had to read the whole thing."

Gould has always been supportive of her interests in this area, she says, encouraging her to attend seminars and conferences.

"Not that I can repeat everything, but it changed my worldview in the natural sciences," Pilot says.

Manuel J. Lim, secretary to Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz, says he came to the job having no interest in law as a career.

"Never in a million years would I have envisioned myself working for a lawyer, much less so for someone like Professor Dershowitz," he says. "One of the things that is rewarding and sometimes frustrating about this job is that there really isn't a typical schedule each day," he says.

Assistants say they have to develop cross-discipline savvy for professors like Dershowitz, whose activities range from the academic to the administrative to the scholarly to the media-centric.

"In a given day," says Lim, "I will send out his latest syndicated column, talk to a producer of Rivera Live about a segment he will appear on that night and schedule him for a speaking engagement either on or off campus."

Even though he has not changed his long range plans over the last 14 months he's worked with Dershowitz, Lim said he does take more notice of legal matters in the news.

"I definitely enjoy being behind-the-scenes," he says.

The Shape of Week

Despite similarities in the tasks that assistants to professors face, their weekly and daily routines are shaped by the patterns that their bosses established.

Randolph, who is employed full time, splits her week based on Gomes's schedule: he is only in his Memorial Church office from Wednesday to Friday.

The professor spends the first few days of the week on his many other duties, which include speaking, teaching, and writing scholarly articles.

"My Monday and Tuesday are spend organizing the rest of the week's activities and whatever future planning needs to be done that week," Randolph says.

"When he comes in on Wednesday, and reorganizes things, I have to update the schedule and be flexible and ready to make the priorities of that week work," she added.

It's All About the Money

So how can the average professor--one with a certificate of tenure, a few books, a prominent theory of two--get an assistant?

It's not too easy.

Many assistants are paid for by money from the same grants that endowed their boss's professorship.

Vendler and Hoffman, who have both attained the high rank of University professor, were able to hire assistants because of their endowed professorships, according to Vendler and Gevelyn R. McCaskill, manager of finance and information systems at the Center for European Studies.

Despite her rank, Vendler is still only able to afford a half-time assistant.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has been reluctant to spend the money to hire additional assistants, the professors and staff say.

"We are in dire need of secretarial assistance and staff support of the sort we don't usually have," Vendler says.

Other professors, especially in the humanities, she says, don't have enough help.

"Scientists teach far less than humanists and always have assistance built in through lab grants. Social scientists also have assistance built in assistants in grants," Vendler says.

On the other hand, all Harvard Law School professors have assistants, though many share. A few, such as Dershowitz and Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. have their own.

Personal Relationships

Over her many years of employment with Gould, Pilot says that she has formed a strong working relationship with him.

"As he became more important and when he became sick, I took more responsibility on myself," she says.

"He would just give me a pile of things to take care of. He learned that he could rely on me more, and I could work more independently," she added.

She says he often thanks her for her hard work--a quality often lacking in Harvard professors, according to Pilot.

But Vendler says she finds it difficult to form personal friendships with her assistants, partly because turnover rates tend to be high.

"One of the problems with a half-time assistant is they tend to be people en route to someone else. They are constantly leaving," Vendler says. "Then you have to train a new one. You can count on a full time person as being at least quasi-permanent."

As for Pilot, she is in Gould's office more than he is.

But Gould now lives in New York half the year, and Pilot only works part-time. She recently, semi-officially, retired, though she remains on the job to help him finish his next book.

"You can't just terminate a job like that," she insists. "It's not for the money you want to be here. It's for someone who appreciates what you do."