Brown University appointed the first black president in the Ivy League last week, naming Ruth J. Simmons, the president of Smith College and a Harvard alumna, to the post.

Simmons, a well-known advocate for diversity in higher education, has headed Smith since 1995. She will assume office as Brown's 18th president in July 2001.

"When I was told I had been elected this afternoon as president of Brown, I said, 'My ancestors are smiling,'" Simmons said in a news conference.

"I do want to say that I leave Smith with very mixed feelings," she said. "I loved it there, and I never thought anybody could persuade me to leave. So, in a sense, I'm surprised that Brown was able to do that. But being here today I know that it is the right decision for me."

Brown's announcement comes at a time when two other Ivy League universities, Harvard and Princeton, are also searching for new leadership. Although Simmons is highly regarded and has the requisite Harvard degree, her name had not been circulated in media speculation about potential candidates to succeed outgoing Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine.

Harvard's search committee began collecting suggestions from the community this summer. In mid-October, search committee members announced that they had a list of 400 candidates. A former member of the Board of Overseers, the University's second-highest governing board, said that Simmons had probably been nominated.

"If there were 400 names on the list, almost certainly her name was among them," the Overseer said. "She had experience at a major research university and had since been president of a college. It's not surprising that Brown would turn to her."

Simmons received her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard in Romance languages and literatures. At Brown, she will be a tenured professor of comparative literature.

Her selection ends a nine-month search at Brown, where officials were stunned in February by the news of then-President E. Gordon Gee's departure for the high-paying chancellorship of Vanderbilt. His unexpected decision--he had only served two years--hit the Brown community hard.

Brown junior Margie B. Kwoka said she thought Simmons would be a better fit than her predecessor.

"Everybody is really enthusiastic about the new president," Kwoka said. "She is so invested in the kind of values and ideals and goals that Brown students have, which wasn't necessarily a great fit with Gee."

Simmons, 55, is the youngest of a dozen children born to Texas sharecroppers. Major newspapers, including The New York Times, have portrayed her appointment as an academic Cinderella story.

"I remember the first time I asked my mother if I could go to college. She said, hesitating, 'If you can get a scholarship, you can go,'" Simmons said at the news conference.

"Her mouth said, 'If you can get a scholarship,' but her eyes said that she didn't think it would ever happen. So it's been very important to me to imagine that my mother would have been very happy," she said.

A graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans, she has held administrative posts at several schools, including all-women's Smith and historically black Spelman. Her highest post at a major research university was at Princeton, where she served as vice provost before assuming the leadership of Smith.