Vice presidents for student affairs may rank at the low end of the administrative hierarchy, but they deal with the sort of intense controversies that land institutions in the headlines -- racial tensions, student alcohol abuse, suicide, and rape, to name a few. While some vice presidents are interested in moving up the administrative ladder, many others are content to make their entire careers in student affairs.

Ever since she was in graduate school, Frances Lucas-Tauchar knew that she wanted to be a college president. But she had no plan to get there through the traditional route: chair to dean to provost to president. She got there after a long career in student affairs. Ms. Lucas-Tauchar, formerly the vice president for campus life at Emory University, landed her presidency in 2000, when she was named to lead Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss.

It remains unlikely that a research-oriented university would tap a vice president for student affairs as its next president, but that's not necessarily the case anymore at teaching-oriented campuses, especially liberal-arts colleges. Ms. Lucas-Tauchar has joined the ranks of a small but growing number of vice presidents for student affairs-turned-presidents, including Maureen A. Hartford, president of Meredith College; James M. Dennis, president of McKendree College; and Dennis C. Golden, president of Fontbonne College.

Given the range of responsibilities the job entails, the move from student affairs to the presidency was a "natural evolution" for Ms. Lucas-Tauchar. Back in her graduate-student days, she says, "I thought about the skills I'd need when I got to the president's office." She had a good example in her father, Aubrey K. Lucas, who was president of the University of Southern Mississippi from 1975 to 1997, and is serving a one-year term there as an interim president this year.

Ms. Lucas-Tauchar began her career in student affairs for a practical reason: to pay for the Ph.D. in higher-education administration that she earned from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in 1985. But she stayed in student services because she loved the "stimulation, the opportunity to have a high impact on the lives of students." People in student affairs tend to be "warm and fuzzy" folks who "try to create community," she says. "Obviously that's what a president does with donors, trustees, legislators, and external constituencies. They're exactly the same skills, just different constituencies."

In some ways, she says, the student-affairs job can be more emotionally draining than the presidency. She and her student affairs-peers-turned-presidents like to joke about how much easier their job is as president. "Vice presidents for student affairs have to deal with some of the most painful tragedies that befall students," she says. "They're hard jobs. They can be heartbreaking jobs at times."

According to a 1998 survey conducted by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, 70 percent of senior student-affairs officers have Ph.D.'s or Ed.D.'s, says Kevin W. Kruger, the group's associate executive director. Those degrees can be in higher-education administration, counseling, or "in anything," Mr. Kruger says. "There are folks who rise to the position who are from the faculty, though that's not the typical path."