A graduate of New York Catholic schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and Roosevelt, Long Island, she was unused to doing original research.

"We looked at textbooks, we didn't write papers," she says of her prior schooling. "I knew I'd have to learn totally new rules of the game."

But Bell-Rose was a good student and mastered her new environment, earning straight "A's that first year and graduating in 1979. She then went on to attend Harvard Law School and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She spent years as a corporate lawyer in one of New Jersey's blue-stocking law firms before joining the Mellon Foundation as foundation counsel and a program officer.

Despite these accomplishments, she says, "But for affirmative admissions practices, I would not have gone" to Radcliffe, which she describes as a "defining experience in terms exposing me to opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise."

These experiences are instrumental in motivating Bell-Rose's current work. The attacks on affirmative action in California, Texas, and elsewhere have made it even more important, she says, to make sure that African American students are prepared to compete for spots in the highly selective colleges because, "access to those kinds of institutions can be very positive to the students who go." She wants to make sure that that path stays open for students who are "coming behind me."

Working at the Mellon Foundation, Bell-Rose began to explore ways to support programs that would help African American students become more competitive. This fit in with the foundation's general work. As the tenth largest foundation in the country, with an endowment of around $3.3 billion and an annual budget of around $120 million, it has worked with many highly selective colleges and universities on a variety of projects -- including supporting African American and other minority scholars.

The president of the Mellon Foundation, Dr. William G. Bowen, just coauthored a book with former president of Harvard, Dr. Derek Bok, on the consequences of race-sensitive admissions at highly selective colleges and universities, titled The Shape of the River.