CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 9 (UPI) -- Harvard, the oldest university in the United States, is reportedly close to naming its first woman president.
Drew Gilpin Faust, now dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, must receive final approval from Harvard's Board of Overseers at its meeting Sunday, the Harvard Crimson reported. The student newspaper cited sources in the university administration.
If Faust becomes president, she will move from running a small institute with 81 employees and a budget of $16 million to a huge institution with a budget of $3 billion and 25,000 employees. Harvard's operations are complicated because many of its professional schools and other divisions are independent fiefdoms.
The previous president, Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary, was known for an abrasive style. In his most notorious moment, he questioned whether there was a genetic explanation for the comparatively small number of women in the sciences. Harvard was founded in 1635, only five years after the first settlement of Boston. Radcliffe College was founded in 1878, more than 200 years later.
Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard in 1999. The institute, specializing in women's studies, retained the Radcliffe name.
