History
The Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study was founded in 1961 by the President of Radcliffe College, Mary Ingraham Bunting. Following Bunting's vision and her desire to stem the exodus of highly-trained educated women from promising careers, the Institute provided stipends as well as access to all of the resources of Harvard University to take up their chosen creative intellectual studies,. The initial funding for the institute came from the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations,. The Institute was renamed the Bunting Institute in 1978 in honor of Dr. Bunting and also supported women wishing to pursue advanced degrees on a part-time basis. The Institute was later renamed the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
The current Institute came into being by the agreement of October 1, 1999, under which Radcliffe College merged formally into Harvard University. However, long before this date the focus of Radcliffe had already begun to shift, as undergraduate women had for a half-century taken their classes at Harvard, and for a quarter-century lived integrated in dormitories with Harvard men.
In 2001 the Institute was endowed with the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professorship at Radcliffe, the Institute’s first professorship by the Pforzheimer family who also endowed the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Directorship and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Student Fellowship at the Institute's Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, which, with the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program, both of which date back to Radcliffe College days, are mong the Institute's best-known features.
During the period of transition from College to Institute, Mary Maples Dunn served as interim dean. On January 1, 2001, Drew Gilpin Faust became the Institute's first permanent dean; she stepped down in July 2007 to become President of Harvard University. Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, served as interim dean starting in July 2007 and was named dean of the institute on April 28, 2008. She stepped down from that post in June 2011.
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