Historians usually just study great things that happened in the past time, but Drew Faust has made history! On February 11, 2007, Faust was named president of Harvard University.She is the first woman to hold the position in the school's 371-year history. "I am a historian," she said."I've spent a lot of time thinking about the past, and about how it shapes the future.No university in the country, perhaps the world, has as remarkable a past as Harvard's." "And our common enterprise is to make Harvard's future even more remarkable than its past.That will mean recognizing and building on what we already do well.It will also mean recognizing what we don't do as well as we should, and not being satisfied until we find ways to do better." It is her great desire for improvement and willingness to try out new ideas that have given Drew success in a world controlled by men."This is a man's world, my girl, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be." Drew Faust recalls her mother telling her this when she was young, but she didn't _ it. Faust grew up in a well-off family in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley in the 1950s.Even then, she was a trailblazer .A conversation with her family's black handyman   and driver inspired her to write a letter, on school notebook paper, to President Dwight Eisenhower. She asked that he help bring US citizens together in the south, a much divided part of the country at the time. "Drew Faust is a historian with her eyes on the future," said Susan Graham, a professor of Harvard.Many of the university's schools said that they believe Harvard will have a brighter future under the leadership of Drew Faust. What do we know about historians?
They usually study great things that happened in the past. They are usually presidents of universities. They are usually born in well-off families. They are usually women.