Assistant Professor of Fine Arts Alice G. Jarrard will receive Radcliffe College's Junior Faculty Fellowship next year.

The award enables a female junior Faculty member to take a one-year leave of absence from teaching duties at the College in order to conduct research at Radcliffe's Bunting Institute, and includes a $43,000 stipend.

"I'm very excited," Jarrard said. "It means I can have a full year of paid leave in order to work on my next book project."

Jarrard, an expert in southern Baroque architecture, sculpture and painting, will study the "architectural resonances and social dimensions" of five French and Italian theaters, according to a press release.

"I think she's a delight, and from what I know she's a good teacher," said Irene J. Winter, Boardman professor of fine arts and a colleague of Jarrard.

In addition to honoring junior Faculty, the award, established in 1995, is intended to produce long-term change at the University.

"The Junior Faculty Fellowship is a way for Radcliffe to foster tenure parity at Harvard," Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson said in the release.

Winter said the fellowship gives junior Faculty members the chance "to take a breather from the extraordinary efforts of their early years." She emphasized the importance of the uninterrupted research time the award provides.

Winter called the fellowship "one of the best ways" to help increase the percentage of tenured women at Harvard.

"The record of Harvard is not stellar in this regard," she said. "It's helping Harvard as well as junior Faculty."

But while the award provides an opportunity for female junior Faculty to produce the scholarship that is a tenure prerequisite, advocates say Harvard has failed to give the award the recognition it deserves. Only one of four past recipients has received tenure at Harvard to date: Professor of Anthropology Mary M. Steedly.

Bonnie Honig, a former associate professor of government and one of two inaugural fellowship recipients in 1995, left Harvard for Northwestern in 1997 after the University's controversial decision to deny her tenure.

Another former winner, Shannon Jackson, left the department of English and American Literature and Language for the University of California at Berkeley before coming up for tenure. Assistant Professor of Computer Science Margo I. Seltzer '83 remains at Harvard.

Jackson said she considered the fellowship "an absolute privilege and a complete relief," but she said she did not know if her department understood the award's significance.

"I can't say I had any idea what my senior colleagues felt about my getting this fellowship," she said. "I don't know if this was thought a prestigious thing or a thing worthy of note."

Jackson added that she left Harvard because she was convinced she would it would be "very difficult" to receive tenure, an atmosphere she called "demoralizing."

Radcliffe spokesperson Michael A. Armini defended the fellowship, saying that tenure parity "doesn't happen overnight."

"It's not a short-term process," he said.

And Jackson agreed that the significance of the fellowship varies widely in different departments.

"It would be an influential factor in departments who are willing to be influenced," she said. "[Jarrard] is in a very supportive department...I think it would be very influential in her case."

But Jarrard said the question of tenure is not yet her main concern anyway.

"I'm not focusing on the whole tenure process," Jarrard said. "I'm just trying to do the work as I can. I know that having a whole year will help."