Harvard and Radcliffe came together Monday evening to celebrate the retirement of Acting Dean of the Radcliffe Institute Mary Maples Dunn.

Amidst the elegance of Loeb House, Harvard's highest officials praised Dunn for her role in negotiating Radcliffe College's merger with Harvard in the spring of 1999 and in steering the fledging Institute through its first year and a half.

Dunn stepped down on January 1, when Drew Gilpin Faust assumed the helm of the newly formed Institute.

Faust announced the creation of a Mary Maples Dunn Fund for the Preservation of Schlesinger Library. Faust said the Institute had over $150,000 already to maintain, preserve and digitize the library's holdings, starting with the women's rights collection.

University Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 emceed the cocktail reception's tributes, including a tongue-in-cheek speech by University President Neil L. Rudenstine and an emotional farewell by Dunn's assistant, Ann Brown.

Fineberg also presented Dunn with a Harvard chair, engraved with the inscription, "To Mary Maples Dunn: Mother of Invention, and Dean Extraordinaire."

Dunn was president of Smith College and director of the Schlesinger Library before she took over as president of Radcliffe College just after Radcliffe agreed to merge with Harvard in the spring of 1999.

--Staff writer Joyce K. McIntyre can be reached at jmcintyr@fas.harvard.edu.