Martha Simmons, who created and guided the Women's Center through its first four years, is resigning as its director.
She will officially leave Friday.
Ellen Plummer, coordinator of Sexual Assault Support Services, will serve as the interim director.
Simmons helped develop the center as a consultant to the University in 1989. She was hired as director in July 1989.
"I think there just comes a time that you know it's time to leave a project that you've started," Simmons said. "That's what I've come to realize over the past year."
She is leaving as the center prepares to open its newest additions, a 2,000-volume library of feminist works and a new gallery.
Janet Dickerson, vice president for student affairs, will form a committee this fall to conduct a national search for a successor.
"We'd like to take this opportunity as a chance to look where we are, and where we ought to go, to see what the next place will be," said Maureen Cullins, assistant vice president for student affairs/campus community development.
The center will focus on the "here and now," Plummer said. She said she plans to work closely on sexual assault issues with other campus groups, including the Women's Coalition. A new coordinator for Sexual Assault Support Services will be appointed in the next few weeks.
Simmons said she hopes the center will create more programming for graduate women, one of the few topics she could not address as director. "There weren't the resources at the time," she said.
The center probably performed its greatest service by bringing the issues of sexual assault and sexual harassment to the attention of the University community, Simmons said.
Those officials who have worked most closely with Simmons praise her work. "She has played a real leadership role on campus from a practical standpoint and from a policy standpoint," Plummer said.
"I think that she provided excellent vision and leadership for the center," Dickerson said.
In the fall of 1989, Simmons chaired a task force which issued a University-wide rape and sexual assault protocol.
In 1991, the center created the office of the Sexual Assault Support Services coordinator. It oversees both male and female peer education programs, a 24-hour rape crisis center and a "safe haven" for women who feel threatened.
She was also co-chair of the committee charged with formulating a sexual harassment policy.
The center recently began publishing a magazine, "Voices," as a forum for gender issues.
The University has made strides in dealing with women's issues, Simmons said. Since she arrived, the University has appointed Nan Keohane as president of the University and Dickerson as vice president of student affairs.
"I continue to be impressed by the fact that the Board of Trustees appointed a woman [as president] who calls herself a feminist and is an advocate for women's issues," she said. "That speaks very loudly for Duke."
Simmons earned her masters degree from the University in July. After she leaves, Simmons will do consulting work for other educational institutions and take classes at the University.
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