And although Horner has resisted engaging in issues directly relating to women faculty hiring at Harvard, she says the Bunting Institute represents a way of increasing the tenure opportunities for women nationwide by providing them with year-long fellowships to research and write.

Although the Bunting Institute was not given its official name until 1978, the research facility was founded by former Radcliffe President Mary I. Bunting in 1960. At that time, according to the institute's Assistant Director Ann Bookman, the program only gave part-time fellowships, accommodating married women just returning to the workforce.

But by 1974, Bookman says, "it was very clear that women needed full-time scholarships." Then, administrators sought not only to create a multi-disciplinary institute, but also one that would directly aid women in academia, she adds.

One program--which just recently ended--was particularly "designed to increase the rate of tenure" for women scholars. The Carnegie Non-tenured Faculty Program, which focused on the support of junior faculty women, proved very effective in aiding women to achieve lifetime posts, Bookman says. Twenty-six of the 35 women who received appointments in the program later gained tenured positions.

Most recently, the Office for Naval Research gave Bunting a three-year grant to support women in the hard sciences--reflecting one of Horner's primary interests. Each year several women will receive an appointment paid for by the grant.

Through such programs, the Bunting Institute is creating what Radcliffe affiliates say is a network of women in academia that will help change the current conditions for female scholars.

The Murray Center focuses not on the specific problem of hiring and promoting women faculty, but on recording and studying women's various experiences. Each year, the Murray Center accommodates more than 10 fellows who have their own funding and a particular research project.

"It was Matina Horner's baby," James says, referring to the program Horner started in 1976. James says the Murray Center is entering its third stage of development, after spending its initial years compiling a large mass of archival data "particularly focusing on women's lives" and then creating procedures to examine the data.

"We're just launching some huge new programs," James says. Those include plans to increase national and international visibility and the use of the center's resources. In addition, she says the program is planning a conference for next spring at which sociologists and anthropologists from Germany will join leading scholars from the U.S.

"We are on a major new initiative. We're on the cutting edge in the use of new methods and certain kinds of data," James asserts.

Recently the Murray Center was awarded an anonymous $3.2 million endowment grant to increase staff and technology resources. The program has also been given money by the MacArthur Foundation to heighten its national visibility.

But while the first two components of the "troika"--the Bunting Institute and the Murray Center--are integral to the definition of a women's scholarly community evolved during Horner's term as president, many say they are removed from women undergraduates and from most women faculty members at Harvard.

Although "one or two [Bunting fellows] are always involved in women's studies," says Olwen Hufton, chair of the Committee on Degrees in Women's Studies, "there is obviously room for more" interaction between women's studies and the Radcliffe programs.

King agrees that "Bunting is probably even further removed" from women scholars and undergraduates at Harvard than some other parts of Radcliffe.

And James says "there really isn't an established connection" between the Murray Center and Harvard's women's studies program. But, she says, "a lot of undergraduates do thesis work here and twice a year we do workshops--one for faculty and one for undergraduates."