Margery Foster, 93, dynamic dean of women's college

Growing up in Wellesley, Margery Somers Foster made a pact with her mother: If she went to the library every week and read the books her mother selected, she would be excused from most household chores. "Except for light dusting," she would later tell friends.

Dr. Foster held up her end of the bargain, and her studiousness led to a career as an economist and later to the deanship of all-women's Douglass College in New Brunswick, N.J. She also became the first woman to sit on the board of the Prudential Insurance Co. of America.

Dr. Foster, who spent her life breaking down gender barriers and advocating for single-sex education, died Sept. 22 of complications of dementia at her home in Francestown, N.H. She was 93.

As an economist, Dr. Foster specialized in public finance, economic development, and history.

Never married, Dr. Foster was an accomplished woman. During World War II, she served in the WAVES, a women's division of the US Navy, and later traveled the world and became an avid hiker and mountain climber.

In retirement, she became an active conservationist in Maine and New Hampshire.

Appointed dean of Douglass College in 1967, Dr. Foster resigned in 1975 when its faculty was merged with that of the coeducational, state-run Rutgers University, said Helen Davis of Francestown, a former physician at Douglass and a longtime friend. With the union of the faculty, Dr. Foster apparently saw a complete merger coming eventually, Davis said. "But, Margery put up the good fight."

Founded as the New Jersey College for Women in 1918, Douglass became Douglass Residential College this year in the merger with Rutgers. After retiring as dean, Dr. Foster spent several years teaching economics at the Rutgers law school.

"Margery was not a compromiser on principle," said Philip Conkling, president of the Island Institute, a community development group in Rockland, Maine, of which Dr. Foster was a member. "She was proud of the fact that she helped keep Douglass an all-women's college as long as it was."

With all her many achievements, Dr. Foster was "a major role model for other women and hired them at Douglass," said Jeanne Fox who was a member of the college's student council and is now president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

Dr. Foster's arrival at the college might have given a hint that her tenure would not be dull.

"Margery arrived on campus in a convertible Mustang and a speeding ticket from New Jersey State Police for going 85 miles per hour," recalled Jean Burton, a retired Douglass psychology professor.

Dr. Foster set about quickly revamping the curriculum and restructuring some departments.

"Over the years, she never stopped, but her first priority was her students," Burton said. "We used to joke, she deaned as she drove, with reckless abandon, but she got there."

Dr. Foster's promotion of women even reached into the former Soviet Union during some seven trips there, Burton said. She was interested in promoting a greater role for Russian women in the country's economy.

"Margery understood ideas and people and how economics affected them," Conkling said.

Davis accompanied Dr. Foster on one of her trips in 1990, traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railroad where she met a Russian family she eventually sponsored to come to the United States.

The family and Dr. Foster became fast friends and traveled in Russia and in Europe together meeting with Russian scientists and ordinary Russians, Tatiana Bell, the mother of the family, recalled in e-mail from Berkeley, Calif.

Dr. Foster was born in Boston, one of two children of Brent and Grace (Butler) Foster. After skipping several grades in elementary school, she earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Wellesley College in 1934. Her first job was as assistant actuary for New England Mutual Life Insurance Co. With the outbreak of World War II, she joined the WAVES.

After four years as an administrator in the Naval Reserve, rising to the rank of lieutenant, Dr. Foster returned to Wellesley as deputy comptroller for the college and later as director of development, from 1948-1954.

She received her doctorate in economics from Radcliffe College in 1958. Her thesis described the economic situation of Harvard College in the Puritan period.

Before Dr. Foster became a dean, she taught economics at Harvard College, Mount Holyoke College, and at Hollins College in Virginia.

While she always maintained her home in Francestown, at various times she had other homes at Big Sur, Calif., and on Great Diamond Island in Maine. While serving on the board of directors of Prudential from 1973-1985, she would fly in for the monthly meetings in New Jersey from Big Sur "on the red-eye and get a couple of hours' sleep in the Prudential infirmary before the meeting," recalled Isabelle L. Kirchner of New Providence, N.J., a retired Prudential executive. "Margery didn't consider herself any different because she was the only woman on the board. When you pull your weight, you don't have to worry about being specially treated."

Conkling met her in 1984, when she led residents who successfully opposed construction of a 230-unit residential building on Great Diamond because of environmental concerns.

"In her mid-70s, she organized the entire Casco Bay area," Conkling said. '

'She first took on the Portland City Council and then the State of Maine," which had initially approved he project, Conkling said. Six years later, a much smaller development was built.

When Dr. Foster moved back East from Big Sur in 1989, she returned in a "vintage Volkswagen bug, filled to the brim with her belongings and with a carpenter from Maine she had flown out to accompany her," said Carol Hubenthal of Palo Alto, Calif., a cousin.

Dr. Foster leaves one niece and two nephews in California.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Oct. 21 at The Meeting House in Francestown, N.H. Another memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 12 at Voorhees Chapel on the campus of what is now Douglass Residential College in New Brunswick, N.J.

Correction: Because of incorrect information provided to the Globe, an obituary Oct. 10 on Margery Somers Foster, an economist and former college dean, gave the incorrect time for a memorial service tomorrow. The service is at 2 p.m. at the Old Meeting House in Francestown, N.H.