One hundred twenty years after it first pried open the door for women's education at Harvard, Radcliffe College announced yesterday it will dissolve.

An agreement between Radcliffe and Harvard officials paves the way for a formally coeducational Harvard College and a new Radcliffe Institute under the University's umbrella.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, unveiled to staff, alumnae and the press yesterday, will become a non-degree-granting sector of the University on equal administrative footing with Harvard's nine faculties.

"This really is the fulfillment of more than 120 years of a journey that Harvard and Radcliffe undertook together, but separately," said Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine.

The Institute will "sustain a commitment to the study of women, gender and society," according to officials. However, leaders have said that issues of gender will not remain Radcliffe's exclusive focus. The ties that will bind the new interdisciplinary center together have yet to be determined exactly.

"An Institute for Advanced Study can and must define its intellectual foci, so it has both intellectual coherence and, I hope, excellent connections with the intellectual activity that surrounds it," Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles said yesterday.

Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson also announced yesterday that she will step down from her post at the end of June. Wilson, who will take a year-long paid sabbatical before moving on, is Radcliffe's seventh and final president.

Wilson noted yesterday that it has been a "rare privilege" to lead Radcliffe.

"Ten years is a long time to stay in this seat," she said. "I want to invest everything I can in this institution, and this is one way I can do it."

Director of the Schlesinger Library and former Smith College President Mary Maples Dunn will become the interim head of Radcliffe, serving until Rudenstine appoints a permanent dean.

A special committee, which will include at least some current members of the Radcliffe Board of Trustees, will assist in the selection and confirmation of this first Institute dean.

Dunn said yesterday that she expects to be the acting head of Radcliffe for between six months and a year, but that she will stay on until a permanent dean is selected.

"When they find the dean of their dreams, I'll retire again," she said.

Dunn did not rule out returning to the Schlesinger Library if the selection process is quick. In the meantime, current Radcliffe College Archivist Jane S. Knowles will serve as the acting director of the library.

According to one source, the wording of the agreement was bounced back and forth throughout the weekend, and the final papersweren't initialed until minutes before yesterday's3 p.m. press conference.

While today's announcement is not officiallybinding--a detailed legal document is still in theworks--it sets forth a series of generalprinciples that have been agreed upon by the twoinstitutions after more than a year of closed-doornegotiations.