Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Drew Gilpin Faust's tenure as Harvard University's first female president may be measured against the three women currently making names for themselves running Ivy League schools.

Faust, who takes over the oldest college in the U.S. on July 1, follows in the footsteps of female presidents at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University. Those women have strengthened endowment funds, expanded campuses and narrowed the gender gap among faculty and administrators, putting themselves at the forefront among Ivies.

``The combination of what they've done is extraordinary,'' says Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey, and former president of Columbia University's Teachers College in New York.

Ruth Simmons at Brown has established a high profile on social issues ``like few male presidents have,'' he added.

Faust, 59, was named Feb. 11 to lead the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university. The job opened when Lawrence Summers announced his resignation a year ago amid disputes with the university's main undergraduate faculty, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Former President Derek Bok served as interim president for the current academic year.

Turmoil at Ivies

Summers, 52, ended the shortest tenure of a Harvard president since the 1860s, remaining just five years.

Other Ivy college leaders also faced turmoil. At Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, rebellious alumni elected a series of trustees over those backed by the school's administration and President James Wright, 67.

Meanwhile at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Jeffrey Lehman resigned the presidency in 2005 after a public dispute with the school's board of trustees. Lehman, 50, served from 2003 to 2005, the shortest term of any Cornell president.

Faust's appointment means that four of the Ivy League's eight schools will have female presidents. Nationwide, women make up 23 percent of college and university presidents, according to a Feb. 12 report by the American Council on Education's Center for Effective Leadership in Washington.

The first woman to lead an Ivy League school was Judith Rodin, Penn's president from 1994 to 2004.

``It takes time, but what we've seen with the appointment of Drew is nothing short of a sea change,'' says Rodin's successor at the Philadelphia university, Amy Gutmann, 57. ``We're seeing the consequences of the opening of the pipeline in the 1960s with the integration of the Ivy institutions.''

Expansion, Curriculum Changes

Faust, a U.S. Civil War scholar and currently dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will oversee the biggest physical expansion in Harvard's history and implementation of first overhaul of its undergraduate curriculum in three decades.

Harvard, with the world's biggest university endowment at $29.2 billion, will have to work with Boston city officials to carry out a 50-year plan for expanding Harvard across the Charles River from the main campus. The school plans to begin construction this year on new science and arts buildings in the Allston neighborhood, where Harvard Business School is currently located.

Rodin took on a similar task at Penn, rebuilding an adjacent Philadelphia neighborhood that was in decline. The school bought and restored dilapidated houses and built a commercial development with a bookstore, inn and upscale shops.

Rodin, 62, president of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, wasn't available for comment, spokesman Peter Costiglio said.

Fund Raising

Faust also will lead an institution seeking to re-emphasize undergraduate education while upgrading scientific research. During Rodin's tenure, Penn increased its focus on the quality of teaching, more than doubled research funding to $700 million and more than doubled Penn's endowment to $4 billion.

Rodin ``set an incredibly high standard,'' says Stephen Schutt, president of Lake Forest College near Chicago and Rodin's former chief of staff.

The current female Ivy League leaders also have set high bars on raising funds. Simmons, 61, took over Brown in 2001 after doubling the endowment at Smith College, a liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts.

In her new post, she leads a $1.4 billion capital campaign that includes the biggest contributions in the Providence, Rhode Island, school's history: two gifts of $100 million each.

Gutmann in December gave $150,000 to Penn, which has launched a multibillion-dollar capital campaign, to endow a need-based scholarship and set an example for other donors.

Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton, in Princeton, New Jersey, increased the school's endowment to $13 billion from $8.4 billion after taking over in 2001.

Addressing Gender Gap

Tilghman, 60, also narrowed the gender gap among teachers. During her first four years, the percentage of tenured female faculty rose to about 20 percent, or 103 members, from 17 percent, according to a March 2005 report in Princeton Alumni Weekly, a magazine for graduates.

``Shirley Tilghman at Princeton has brought more women into senior administrative positions than anyone,'' Levine says.

Harvard trails the national average for both full-time female instructors and tenured female professors, says Martha West, co-author of the American Association of University Professors Faculty Gender Equity Indicators 2006.

Women fill 28 percent of Harvard's full-time teaching jobs and 20 percent of its tenured positions, the study says. The national averages are 34 percent and 26 percent, respectively.

``The more prestigious the school, the fewer the women,'' says West, 61, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.

Brown Family Slavery

Simmons confronted social issues at Brown, the seventh- oldest college in the U.S., in 2003 by requesting an examination of the school's connections to the slave trade in the 1700s and asking for recommendations for action. The Brown family, for which the university is named, owned slaves.

The school's Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice recommended in October that Brown establish memorials, forums and a research center to educate students and the public, and recruit students from Africa and the West Indies.

``Whether it was our intention or not, we've all been pioneers,'' Gutmann says. ``Because so many talented women didn't have this opportunity in the past, we have a greater sense that it's important to do it well.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Keenan in Boston at mkeenan6@bloomberg.netJames M. O'Neill in New York at joneill6@bloomberg.netBrian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 14, 2007 00:15 EST