The mood was one of excited anticipation as participants in the Radcliffe Mentor Program made their way into the Cronkhite Graduate Center yesterday.

Emerging from the brunch, Joanna Chin '99 and Emily K. Cheung '01 said they were eager to explore the career path pursued by Dr. Carol T. Walsh '67, a pharamcologist at Boston University Medical School.

But Walsh imparted more than a simple recounting of her academic passions. Balancing workplace and family will require introspection, she told them.

"I'll have to use some historical perspective," Walsh said. "Because when I was really involved in all the career and family balancing I was too busy to be a mentor--I was chasing after child care and two kids."

At a University where professional role models are hard to find, students, men and women alike, often look to their academic departments or their Houses for guidance.

But, educators increasingly acknowledge, women leaving the College for the professional world face a different world than that faced by men.

Women's challenges include persistent discrepancies in hiring and pay, lack of flexibility in paid-leave and child-care programs and, especially in the sciences, forging pathways in male-dominated fields.

The plethora of mentorship programs offered by Radcliffe are intended to elevate undergraduate women's prospects for success in the workplace-- by establishing social networks and giving women a glimpse of life outside Harvard's gates.

"Women students look for a fuller presence in a mentor than what they look for in a teacher," said Tamar March, dean of Radcliffe College. "They seek guidance not only on an intellectual level, but from the fuller person. Very often what the student is interested in is how the mentor got to her position as a scholar, spouse--if that's so--or professional. It's a multifaceted role."

The mentorship programs are a valued resource provided by Radcliffe, an institution whose significance has been questioned in recent years by critics who contend it is little than a fund-raising organ.

Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson emphasized in an interview that "there are some advantages to having female mentors, but it's important to have both men and women mentors."

However, Wilson--herself a mentor for undergraduates --added that for many female students the mentorship experience "has been a shaping matter to be able to see people who look like them doing things they want to do."

A 'Fuller Person'

For 12 years the Radcliffe Mentor Program has annually matched about 110 female students with mentors. The brunch yesterday was only the first step for this year's pairs in a process that, March says, takes advantage of the "fuller person."

Kim McGrath, who has been administering the mentorship program since 1994, defined it as "career-oriented," with an interest in helping first-year students but focusing on the needs of seniors.