"It works for me, because I knew what I was walking into from the beginning," Hehir said. "I committed myself to serve the institution and the community of the Catholic Church as a diocesan priest, so I expect that my career choices will be directly influenced by the life of the church."

Hehir refused to accept the title of dean of Harvard Divinity School, to make clear that he had a higher commitment, so Harvard agreed to call him chairman of the executive committee. He also declined to live in the divinity school's mansion, choosing instead to reside in a parish rectory in Cambridge, and he insisted on having a day off each week to work for a Catholic cause, traveling every Friday to Baltimore to help Catholic Relief Services.

Clark, named to head the business school in 1995, also declined to live in the mansion normally made available to the dean, saying he did not want to raise his seven children on campus. And because Mormons do not drink alcoholic or coffee beverages, Clark initially struggled with his entertaining duties. Ultimately, he decided that all his work-related entertaining would take place at Harvard, not at his home.

While at Harvard, Clark said, he was careful to keep many aspects of his faith private.

"People need to have confidence that when I am taking a position or arguing a point or making a decision, that somehow I am not trying to impose my faith or my beliefs on other people, and there is a spirit of openness and open inquiry here," he said.

"I have tried to live what I believe, and run this school to the best of my ability, but I have not made it — my faith — a public experience for people," he said. "At BYU-Idaho, it becomes a much more public sharing of that experience, because it's the church."

Clark grew up in Washington and Utah, states with large Mormon populations, and was 18 when he arrived at Harvard in the summer of 1967, for a job cleaning out dormitories before the start of his freshman year.

"I felt really kind of like I was in a different universe from what I had grown up with," Clark said.

But he stayed, earning a bachelor's degree in 1974 and a doctorate in economics in 1978. He joined the Harvard faculty that year. He has been away from Harvard for significant amounts of time on only three occasions: for two years as a Mormon missionary in Germany while an undergraduate, for a year at BYU's main campus in Provo, Utah, while a graduate student, and for six months working at the U.S. Department of Labor during the Ford administration, when one of his graduate professors, John T. Dunlop, was serving as the agency's secretary.