Faust, 59, recognized the significance of her appointment.

"I hope my appointment can be one symbol of an opportunity that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago," she said at a news conference. But, she added, "I'm not the woman president of Harvard, I'm the president of Harvard."

With Faust's appointment, half of the eight Ivy League schools will have a woman as president. Her selection is noteworthy given the uproar over Summers' comments that genetic differences between the sexes might help explain the dearth of women in top science jobs, comments which sparked debates about equality at Harvard and nationwide.

Faust oversaw the creation of two faculty task forces, formed in the aftermath of Summers' remarks, to examine gender diversity at Harvard. She has been dean of Radcliffe since 2001, two years after the former women's college was merged into the university as a research center with a mission to study gender issues.

"This is a great day, and a historic day, for Harvard," said James R. Houghton, chairman of the presidential search committee.

Faust is the first Harvard president who did not receive an undergraduate or graduate degree from the university since Charles Chauncy, an alumnus of Cambridge University in England, who died in office in 1672. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also a professor of history.

Faust pivots from managing Radcliffe, a think-tank with 87 employees and a $17 million budget, to presiding over Harvard's 11 schools and colleges, 24,000 employees and a budget of $3 billion. The Harvard presidency is perhaps the most prestigious job in higher education, offering a pulpit where remarks resonate throughout academic circles and unparalleled resources, including a university endowment valued at nearly $30 billion.

"Faculty turned to her constantly as someone whose opinion is to be trusted," said Sheldon Hackney, a former president of The University of Pennsylvania and southern historian who worked closely with Faust. "She's very clear, well-organized. She has a sense of humor, but she's very even-keeled. You come to trust in her because she's so solid."

In Faust, Harvard not only has its first female leader, but a president who has candidly discussed her feminist ideals in a memoir, "Shapers of Southern History: Autobiographical Reflections."

Born Catherine Gilpin in the Jim Crow era, to a privileged family in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Faust wrote that a conversation at age 9 with the family's black handyman and driver inspired her to send a letter to President Eisenhower pleading for desegregation.

She then began to question the rigid Southern conventions where girls wore "scratchy organdy dresses" and white children addressed black adults by their first names.