Radcliffe administrators have spent the last four years since the merger hammering out the details of its new identity as an institute for advanced study, attempting to streamline programs and refine its mission.

Radcliffe is no longer a women’s college—it is something entirely different in spirit and idea. The Radcliffe Institute revolves around a fellowship program, and it has shed many of the educational programs and the connections with undergraduates that once defined its existence.

These streamlining efforts have been largely successful, and many predict that the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is on its way to joining an elite and prestigious league—and establishing itself within the University.

Though it has for the most part left its past identity behind, the Institute’s mission includes a commitment to “women, gender and society” as a nod to Radcliffe’s heritage.

And because of its history as a former women’s college the present Radcliffe Institute possesses what no other comparable organization has—an alumnae body.

Susan S. Wallach ’68, a former member of the Radcliffe College Board of Trustees who played a key role in negotiating the Harvard-Radcliffe merger, says that alumnae interests factored significantly into what Radcliffe has become.

“We had a clear list of things [during the merger negotiations] that were central to Radcliffe College and Radcliffe history,” says Wallach. “These were things that were non-negotiable and reflected what alums wanted and were really concerned about, and what had grown out of Radcliffe’s history.”

But despite attempts to include alumnae input in the reshaping of Radcliffe, many alumnae say their role in the Institute feels unclear.

“It is a little awkward to be an alumna of a college that no longer exists,” says New York Times reporter Linda J. Greenhouse ’68, who will receive the alumnae recognition award for the 35th reunion class this week. “The Institute is struggling to deal with what to do with the alums.”

This built-in constituency is both a blessing and a burden. Alumnae don’t fit into the puzzle of the new Radcliffe, and yet the Institute must reconcile the vestiges of its collegiate past with its emerging identity.

At its inception, the Institute inherited a body of alums which didn’t have any direct connection to the new mission and goals of the Institute, but remained sentimentally attached to the idea of Radcliffe.

Alumnae feel varying degrees of ownership towards the nebulous new institute.

“Many of my classmates say they feel dispossesed by the merger,” says Charlotte P. Armstrong ’49, a former president of the Board of Overseers who also helped in merger negotiations. “It’s a different relationship [with the Radcliffe Institute.] The women of my era are not altogether part of the Institute and they’re not altogether a part of Harvard. They’re in never-never land.”

But if the idea of an institute for advanced study appears remote and incongrous to some alumnae, even the most skeptical are swayed by Faust’s vision for Radcliffe’s future.

For Faust as well as alums, this is a vision firmly rooted in Radcliffe’s history.