By Emily Harrison Weir

September 30 brought the dazzle of inauguration day, but for Ruth Simmons, the world had turned upside down a full three months earlier. "On June 30, I was just another staff person at Princeton," she recalls. "I went from that very normal life to something completely different in a day!" On July 3, Simmons convened her first meeting with Smith's senior staff, rolled up her sleeves, and got down to work as its ninth president. In addition to juggling myriad management concerns, unpacking her belongings and learning lots of new names, Simmons was a media magnet, as she had been since the day she accepted her new post.

Even before she was officially installed as president, Simmons had discussed affirmative action on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, had defended women's colleges on PBS' Charlie Rose program, and was profiled by the Boston Globe Magazine, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Philadelphia Inquirer and U.S.1, among others.

But the media spotlight didn't usurp all of Simmons' time. She held summer retreats with top administrators and the board of trustees, and had countless conversations with faculty and alumnae groups. "The things I did this summer gave me a good appreciation for the range of issues a president has to undertake," Simmons says.

Hundreds of letters, faxes, e-mail messages and phone calls brought congratulations and advice. "A lot of people have taken responsibility for my education as a new president, and I've appreciated the different perspectives," Simmons says. "I have all kinds of information and ideas swimming around in my head." Even comedian Bill Cosby phoned with his "wonderful and wise" take on her new role. "He said I should be aware of the president's capacity to influence the lives of students; that they'll be aware of what I do and how I do it," she explains. Alumnae comments ran the gamut, but a common thread was maintaining Smith as a first-rate college. Simmons says, "Alumnae have an intense interest in making sure we continue to do a good job, and I think that's great."

Though she handled presidential duties from day one, the gravity of Simmons' position truly sank in when she signed School for Social Work diplomas. "That was a moment of great humility for me, because it made me think about the responsibility I was taking on for the education and success of our students," she explains.

Aside from SSW participants, the campus was missing a vital presence during Simmons' first months: students. "With all due respect to the valuable people who work at this college, the real excitement for me was when the students got here," Simmons says. "After all, what we do is not about pleasing us; it's about contributing healthy, intelligent and capable women to society." So she was especially touched to receive lots of summer mail from students, some with "no other purpose than to say, 'I'm glad that you're here,'" she reports.

Viewers of her TV appearances, as well as those who have seen her in action on campus, concur that Simmons is quintessentially "presidential." Is it as easy as she makes it seem? "No!" she laughs. "It's very hard for me, because more than most people I value quiet, time to reflect and opportunities for deep conversation. And everything a college president does is rushed and a bit on the superficial side. I'm afraid I'm going to lose myself in this job, so I have moments of incredible doubt."

Nevertheless, Simmons is plunging ahead with her agenda. "My first goal is to work on our sense of our community. Now that I've had conversations with so many people on campus, I'm even more impressed by the need for people to feel drawn together toward a common goal. I want to be able to say at the end of my first year that people feel better about their relationship to this common purpose, and that people understand better how valuable they are to what Smith is and to what Smith is becoming," Simmons says. "More than anything I want to help people understand how wonderful a place we are blessed to be in."