When Mary Maples Dunn, acting dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, taught a senior seminar at Bryn Mawr about the Monroe Doctrine in the spring of 1968, Drew Gilpin was one of her most outstanding students.

"She was the type of student you shape your teaching to," Dunn says.

Dunn even wrote the young Gilpin a letter of recommendation for graduate school.

With 32 years, a Ph.D. and a different last name behind her, Drew Gilpin Faust is poised to assume her former professor's position as Dean of the Radcliffe Institute.

Faust has her old teacher's approval. Last week Dunn said that she was "thrilled" about the appointment and quipped yesterday that she "won't look Drew up in [her] old grade books."

But Faust has taken on what is likely to be one of the most challenging positions she'll hold in academia.

After two years of intense and often strained negotiations, Radcliffe College agreed to merge with Harvard last spring. The negotiations pitted a Radcliffe delegation bent on preserving the college's identity against Harvard deal makers who wanted to assume full control over undergraduates.

When the deal was finally completed last October, the big details--like the amount of money Harvard would kick in for Radcliffe's endowment--were in place and in writing.