Clayton Spencer holds the symbols of office during her installation ceremony as the eighth president of Bates College. The symbols are the keys, the presidential collar and the record book.

Bates formally installed Ava Clayton Spencer, a woman described by her former boss as the “embodiment of Bates values,” as its eighth president before a gathering of 2,500 in Merrill Gymnasium on Friday afternoon.

Spencer, who officially began work at Bates in July, was ceremonially installed as president in a celebration marked by glowing good wishes, a few tough facts and just enough pomp. Filling the gym were students, faculty, friends, Spencer’s predecessors as Bates president and 72 delegates representing colleges and universities from as far away as England.

Also on hand were Spencer’s family and friends — including her parents, who got a briefly teary shout-out from their daughter as she held the cap her father Sam had worn as president of Mary Baldwin and of Davidson colleges.

With a sleek stage, complete with giant video screens, the usually utilitarian Merrill was transformed for the occasion into a stunning ceremonial showcase. Michael Bonney ’80, chair of the Bates Board of Trustees, presided over a festivity that included music written and performed by faculty and students, formal greetings from diverse quarters and the ritual presentation of the symbols of the college — collar, record book and keys.

Complete video of the installation ceremony:

Bringing greetings from the students, for instance, Jacquelyn Holmes ’13 assured Spencer that “we will always be here for you — please lean on us, use us and keep us in the loop.”

Greetings from the Twin Cities came from mayors Jonathan LaBonté, of Auburn, and Robert Macdonald, of Lewiston, who offered a gracious verbal hand of friendship.

Representing the Academy, Williams College president and physics professor Adam Falk provided a useful reminder of Spencer’s contributions to higher education even before she got to Bates, as an aide to U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, and as vice president for policy at Harvard.

Falk, who has seen Spencer in action through her service as a Williams trustee, told her that “you understand as well as anyone I know what makes colleges and universities work.”

Perhaps the deepest dish on the new president came from her former boss, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust. She shared a droll summary of Spencer’s contribution to Harvard in the words of William Fitzsimmons, that university’s dean of admissions and financial aid: “Anything good that happened at Harvard from 1997 to 2012 was because of Spencer, and everything bad was something she objected to.”

Clayton Spencer speaks during her installation ceremony as the eighth president of Bates College on Friday, October 26, 2012.

More seriously, though, Faust traced Spencer’s bedrock dedication to justice to a Southern childhood lived during the height of the civil rights era, and named Harvard initiatives, such as the Crimson Summer Academy, through which that dedication has borne fruit. Through education, Faust said, Spencer has bent Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral arc of the universe a bit further toward justice.

Bates’ new president, she said, is the “embodiment of Bates values.”

Spencer began her own address with her predecessors at Bates, who faced their own exigent landscapes of change, crisis and opportunity. In our time, she said, the turbulence is driven by technology that is transforming both how colleges do their work, and how that work is evaluated outside academe.

“These qualities are in the DNA of Bates College.”

She used Benjamin E. Mays ’20, the great educator, theologian and civil rights leader, as a both a metaphor for the founding Bates ethos, and an illustration of applying that ethos in the coming times. Coming to Bates, she explained, Mays both benefited from and expanded Bates values.

Bates was founded, she said, “because, somehow, from our very beginnings, we encountered individuals in their full humanity. We took as our task educating them with intellectual rigor, ethical responsibility and care for their fellow human beings.”

“These qualities are in the DNA of Bates College, and they define us to this day. They also point the way forward.”

Mays’ example, too, illustrates both the focus on individual growth in the liberal arts model, and the role of community in nurturing that growth. “The most complete kind of human learning takes place in community, with the solidarity of companionship and the challenge of truth,” she said. And the most open and diverse community is the best kind of community to support learning.

“At Bates, we claim this union of excellence and opportunity as a core element of our identity, and we need to continue to build on this deep aspect of who we are.”

Bates’ eighth president concluded her inaugural address with a reference to the late Steve Jobs, who once told a group of graduating students that “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

“Likewise, at Bates, we don’t have time to waste,” she said. “But we are not in danger of living someone else’s life.  We know who we are and what we stand for, and we stand ready – together — to challenge ourselves and to engage the world.”

Members of the Class of 2016 walk to their AESOP orientation at Lake Andrews. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Welcoming the most selective and geographically diverse class in the school’s history, Bates begins its 2012-13 academic year on Tuesday, Sept. 4.

President A. Clayton Spencer, who took office July 1, offers her first official address as head of college during the annual Convocation ceremony, which marks the opening of the academic year. The eighth president of Bates, she will welcome the 503 members of the Class of 2016, as well as 17 transfer students new to Bates.

The event begins at 4:10 p.m. on the historic Quad, at Campus Avenue and College Street. Rain site is Alumni Gymnasium, 130 Central Ave.

Stephen M. Engel, assistant professor of politics, will give the Convocation address. Titled On the Responsibility of a Liberal Arts Education, it will relate the need for compromise in a successful democracy to the attitudes that enable a successful education.

Dean of the Faculty Pamela Baker, Student Government President Umar Khan and Multifaith Chaplain William Blaine-Wallace will also speak during the ceremony.

Convocation addresses

Spencer’s and Engel’s addresses will each refer to the book that the class of 2016 was asked to read during the summer, The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It, by Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (Princeton University Press, 2012). Examining the qualities found in both effective governance and campaigning for office, Gutmann and Thompson argue that the rejection of compromise in contemporary American politics is linked to the development of a “constant campaign” mindset that leaves little room for actual governing.

In her remarks, titled Lessons in Compromise and Life Learned from a Master, Spencer will reflect on the Gutmann-Thompson book in light of her experience as a staffer in the U.S. Senate. From 1993 until 1997, as chief education counsel for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Spencer worked for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a politician known for his ability to cross ideological lines to advance important legislation.

Engel, who came to Bates a year ago, will draw connections between higher education and effective governance in a democracy. “Governing requires working with one’s opposition, a prudent compromising on principle to achieve outcomes for the common good and clear elaboration of intersecting interests rather than stark distinctions,” he explains.

Good governance, he says, mirrors “the same approach that the Bates education strives to inculcate: an openness to evidence, an eagerness toward meaningful debate, a readiness to re-evaluate and the willingness to converse with honesty and integrity.”

The class of 2016, by the numbers

For the new class, Bates accepted 26.6 percent of the 4,905 applicants, the most selective the college has ever been. With 503 of the 1,304 admitted students choosing to enroll, the “yield” rate of 39 percent is an increase of 3 percentage points over last year’s rate.

The members of the class are 54 percent female and 46 percent male. A tenth of the class is from Maine, with seven students from Lewiston-Auburn. Eight percent come from other countries — 26 countries in all, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

A third of the class ranked in the top 5 percent of their high school class academically. Ten percent of the incoming students represent the first generation in their families to attend college, and 16 percent are U.S. multicultural (African American, Asian American, Hispanic or Native American/Pacific Islander).

The speakers

Named as Bates’ president late last year, Spencer came to the college from Harvard University, where she served most recently as vice president for policy. Widely regarded as an effective and collaborative higher education leader, Spencer worked with four Harvard presidents to shape key initiatives over the past 15 years. She’s a graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School.

Engel’s research interests include American political development, constitutional development, relations among the branches of government and social movements, particularly gay and lesbian mobilization for social change.

He is the author of American Politicians Confront the Court: Opposition Politics and Changing Responses to Judicial Power (2011, Cambridge University Press), examining hostilities directed toward the federal judiciary by Congress or the president; and of The Unfinished Revolution: Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

A new president, Clayton Spencer.

Clayton Spencer, introduced as the college’s eighth president in December 2011, poses in Perry Atrium of Pettengill Hall for photographer Phyllis Graber Jensen for the Spring 2012 issue of Bates Magazine.

By Meg Kimmel
Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen

On a Sunday afternoon in December, the Clifton Daggett Gray Athletic Building had become a bustling event venue, as Bates leaders sat onstage before hundreds of students, faculty and staff who had put aside studies, holiday errands and football games to meet their next president. Clayton Spencer was backstage, listening for her name — her cue to come forward.

Interim President Nancy Cable welcomed the throng, followed by Presidential Search Committee co-chair Michael Chu ’80.

And when trustee chair Mike Bonney ’80 wound up his introduction with the simple words, “Welcome, Clayton Spencer,” she stepped from behind the curtain, smiling, grasping the pages of her speech and ready to greet a crowd eager to know more. A little choked up, she began a new relationship with her new college.

She surveyed the gathering and spoke her first word as president-elect of Bates College. “Wow!”

With trustee chair Mike Bonney ’80, the president-elect takes audience questions after the presidential announcement.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

From her formative upbringing as the daughter of a college president to her innovative policy work at Harvard, Clayton Spencer’s rise as a U.S. higher education leader culminates in her wow debut as president-elect of Bates — and her avowed commitment to leading Bates toward a stronger marriage of excellence and opportunity.

Made for the job

Ava Clayton Spencer was born in December 1954 to Samuel and Ava Spencer in Concord, N.C.

“I grew up as the daughter of a college president. I used to sneak across campus to watch commencements as a kid,” she recalls. “Dinner conversation was about the issues facing the college.”

Previously president of Mary Baldwin College, Sam Spencer began his 15-year tenure as president of Davidson College in 1968. By then, those dinnertime topics included the Vietnam War, civil rights, coeducation (Davidson was still all male) and fraternities.

That wasn’t all: in the city of Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County, the landmark busing case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was heading to the Supreme Court.

“Because we were in a small town in North Carolina, guests of the college would stay with us or have a meal. I was a teenager by then, and I’d gone from listening to the adults from a window seat in the living room, to wanting a seat at the table and attending the various talks and lectures at the college. I soaked up everything.”

Fatherly advice

“What I learned from my father,” Clayton Spencer says, “and what I’ve learned and relearned throughout life, is that whatever you’re doing, you have to be authentically you.” Samuel Reid Spencer Jr. served as president of Davidson College, his alma mater, from 1968 to 1983.

Samuel Reid Spencer Jr. served as president of Davidson College, his alma mater, from 1968 to 1983. Photograph courtesy Davidson College.

The road to the presidency

Spencer studied history and German at Williams College, making her the second Bates president to have a bachelor’s from there, after T. Hedley Reynolds, Williams ’42. She then read theology at Oxford University and earned a master’s in the study of religion at Harvard.

She is the first to have a law degree, from Yale.

Of her decision to not seek a doctorate in religion, she says that she “wanted a life that combined ideas and action, and therefore landed at Yale for law school. I was able to do the kind of conceptual thinking I love, while staying engaged in the facts on the ground. That dialectic, between ideas and facts on the ground, has informed my life ever since.”

On announcement day, a proud mom with her proud children, Will and Ava Carter.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Power from dialectical poles

“The field of religion fundamentally deals intellectually and morally with contradictions. How do you stay optimistic when you know that you’re going to die, when you know that bad things are going to happen to good people?

“Religion takes on these contradictions, placing you between the poles of the contradiction and making you think dynamically about finding a way forward. Dialectical thinking is how I move through practical problems. It’s the furniture of my mind.”

A lesson from Ted Kennedy

Speaking of “poles of contradiction,” Spencer tells a story about working on Capitol Hill for the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, as chief education counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, which Kennedy chaired.

“I first met the senator when we were trying to pass direct lending for student loans, moving from a guarantee-agency system to funding directly from the federal government to colleges. I wrote a memo about how we were going to move 100 percent to direct lending in one fell swoop.

“I was called in to meet with the senator. He sat in his well-worn leather armchair. And he said, ‘Clayton, I’ve read your memo. It’s a really smart memo. Why don’t you take a walk with me down the hall?’

“He took me to the office of Jim Jeffords, then a Republican senator from Vermont before he went independent. Jeffords was the swing vote on the committee. He said, ‘Jim, my new education staffer here thinks this direct-lending thing is going to go through, no problem, at the markup next week. Can you tell her how many votes you have on the Republican side?’

“Jeffords said, ‘Well, Ted, I’ve got one or two on my side, but you ought to be more worried about your side. You don’t have a majority of the Democrats yet.’

“The senator walked me back, and he said, ‘We’ll give it several weeks, we’ll work it and then we’ll get this done.’ That was how I was introduced to getting things done on Capitol Hill: It takes more than smart memos to win the day.”

The ideal persuader

“The Senate is a culture of persuasion, as is a college campus,” Spencer says.

“Sen. Kennedy cared passionately about ideals, but he knew that ideals were sterile unless you could somehow put them into action. He was one of the most productive legislators in U.S. history because he knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.”

Given Kennedy’s stature and power, Spencer, in effect, was chief education counsel for not just the committee but “the entire Senate and the country,” says Nick Littlefield, former Kennedy chief of staff.

“Clayton was a leader. She could master the substance of any issue; she could build the bipartisan alliances to get the initiative passed; and she could communicate the objective and details of the initiative in a charismatically persuasive way.

“She was one of the most respected staff directors I’ve ever known.”

Getting things done

Spencer joined Harvard in February 1997 as a consultant for federal policy issues. The following year, she was appointed associate vice president for higher education policy reporting to the President, and in 2005 she rose to the new position of vice president for policy.

Working directly with four different Harvard presidents, Spencer became known for her collaborative approach, effectiveness in getting things done and passionate commitment to access and affordability.

A historic moment as Interim President Nancy Cable introduces the president-elect to President Emeritus Donald Harward in Perry Atrium during a 2012 celebration of new appointments to Bates faculty professorships. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Of her involvement in various university-wide initiatives, from a task force on the advancement and support of women in academic life to the role of the arts and international strategy, Spencer is especially proud of her part in three projects at Harvard:

• The merger of Harvard and Radcliffe College and the subsequent transformation of Radcliffe into an institute for advanced study;

• The redesign and dramatic expansion of Harvard’s financial aid program;

• The creation of the Crimson Summer Academy for academically talented high school students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.

“I learned a great deal by observing a variety of leadership styles,” she says. “The most basic lesson is this: Effective leadership is based on persuasion, not on hierarchy or on one’s position on an organizational chart. Leadership is most effective when you bring cooperative work to bear on solving hard problems.

Spencer dines with student leaders in New Commons as she meets and greets on campus after the announcement of her election on Dec. 4.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

“I believe this is one of the most fun things to do in life. You take on a hard problem, get the best thinkers around the table, invite the great ideas and then move toward actual, concrete outcomes. In my experience, achieving a unity of ideas and action will motivate the entire community and propel an institution forward.”

Turning crimson

Her highly effective yet low-key style caught the attention of The Harvard Crimson, which in 2008 published a profile headlined “Right-Hand Woman.”

“…[C]olleagues say she studiously avoids imperiousness,” wrote Clifford Marks, now a reporter for the National Journal. “Fellow trustees of Williams College, on whose board she has served for five years, say that Spencer is an exceedingly modest ‘coalition-builder,’ experienced in organizing support in the ego-dominated halls of both Washington and Cambridge. ‘It’s not Clayton’s style to hold herself out as “I know more than you do,”’ said Williams trustee Michael Keating. ‘She’s very careful to say, “Based on what I know, I have this point of view.”’”

The Gomes connection

Spencer says she was “very privileged” to work at Harvard with the late Rev. Peter Gomes ’65 in his role as the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.

“Peter had such rich and contradictory gifts, and you saw them all in a dynamic blend that was enormously powerful.

“I was introduced to Bates in part through Peter’s love for the college. Peter wrote in one of his later books, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, that Jesus ‘wants us to live in the full implications of our human gifts.’ That’s a pretty interesting way to encapsulate the essence of the liberal arts, and the Bates experience as well.

“Clearly that’s a lesson he took very seriously and deeply.”

Coming to the party

“In the course catalog, you describe yourselves as a community of people who love ‘ideas, artistic expression, good talk and great books.’ Who wouldn’t want to be at that party?

Bates staff and faculty gather in the Fireplace Lounge in New Commons to ask questions of and hear from their new leader.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

“When I read the presidential prospectus, I was blown away by Bates. It was love at first sight. Any college that leads its mission statement with an affirmation of the ‘emancipating potential of the liberal arts’ is a place I want to be.

“Then there’s the fact that from your earliest beginnings, Bates welcomed women and African Americans into the full standing of the scholarly community, at a time when that simply wasn’t done. I love a place that does what is right, rather than what is expected.

“Another quality that comes through loud and clear is the lack of pretension, that sense of being down to earth, having an authentic way of moving through the world. And that suits me to a T.”

Spencer visits Cutten Maintenance Center to thank staff for turning the Gray Athletic Building into a grand venue for the presidential announcement. From left, Dan Nein, Mike Adams and John Griffiths.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Adding to the allure is the college’s place in the state of Maine and the city of Lewiston. “I find this state fascinating and I respect its reserve — the fact that it’s hard to crack.”

What’s fun?

“Movies — all kinds. Solving hard problems with smart people. Basketball. Arugula salads. Being a mom [daughter Ava Carter is a Harvard junior; son Will Carter is working on Wall Street with a degree from NYU]. Good friends. Catching up with James Reese, a 10th-grade classmate!”

Not what we have, but what we do

“One of the legacies of the 2008 financial crisis is that we can no longer, in our society, equate wealth with excellence in higher education. But Bates knew that long ago: Bates was founded on the idea that it’s less about what we have and much more about what we do. That is tremendously appealing to me.

“The important thing for us now is to make sure that Bates is delivering on the liberal arts model as much as we say we are, and to make sure that the value added in this experience is worth the price.”

Win, at some cost

“I am simple-minded. My view is that in athletics, as in everything else, it’s not worth doing unless you do it with the same commitment to rigor and excellence that you apply in other fields.”

Take cake, forget humble pie

“I know Bates is famous for being humble, but I hope now that the college can step up and claim its excellence and rigor. Bates is doing important work in shaping a direction for the liberal arts in this new century. You see it in the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, in the general education curriculum, and in the ongoing commitment both to individual and collaborative work for theses and capstone projects.

The president-elect makes tracks to get up to speed on Bates Sean McGhee ‘12 of Chicago, Ill., talks with Spencer in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, site of the annual debate between Morehouse and Bates on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

“To my mind, Bates is poised to be a leader in transforming the liberal arts for today’s world.”

Knowledge and wisdom

“Given the welter of information and stimuli that confront people today, it is important to give students a framework of values and knowledge that can lead to wisdom that will guide them in life.”

Angela Su ‘12 of Flushing, N.Y., explains her research poster, “Lead Interactions with Metallothionein-3,” to the Bates president-elect at the 2012 Mount David Summit.
Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Obligation to democracy

“Education is the key to the American dream. Ideally, it provides individual opportunity to talented students, whatever their backgrounds, and creates the educated citizenry that is essential to a healthy democracy and civil society. Unless higher education marries excellence and opportunity, it is not doing its job. It’s an old-fashioned idea, but it’s never been more important than it is today.”

Passion and tools

“I think we need the courage of our convictions about the liberal arts experience. It’s not the right option for everyone, but at its best, it teaches young people to harmonize their passions with rigorous intellectual training and to take a sense of creativity and possibility out into the world to serve purposes larger than themselves.”

President-elect Clayton Spencer (left) talks with interim President Nancy Cable and Trustee Karl Mills '82 before the Reunion Address. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

“It’s not enough simply to circle the wagons and insist that small is better, or that nothing can replace the human factor in education,” Spencer told enthusiastic listeners on the Friday evening of Reunion, June 8.

Complete Reunion 2012 coverage

“How do we think about Bates and places like Bates in the context of this challenging world?” she asked. “How do we make a case that we’re still important, that it’s still worth it to come to Bates, that the education you got here is still worth something?”

Sharing the podium with interim President Nancy Cable at an event launching Reunion Weekend, Spencer was candid in her views about the world for which Bates is educating students, as well as the strengths and the needs the college brings to that work.

Sharing the Reunion Address podium with interim President Nancy Cable (right), President-elect Spencer was candid in her views. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Culminating in a standing ovation, the alumni welcome was warm for the leader who will take office July 1. The “standing O” was preceded by whoops of enthusiasm about points she made and appreciative laughter at Spencer’s humor.

Her address followed an opening presentation, likewise warmly received, by Cable, who has led Bates since July 2011. Bates Trustee Karl Mills ’82 introduced the presidents.

Cable looked back at a year that was anything but a placeholder between “real” presidents: a year marked by the implementation of a dance major, the opening of the renovated Hedge and Roger Williams halls, the emergence of a reinvigorated Bates Career Development Center, and an excellent run in athletics.

But if Cable offered the year in review, Spencer looked ahead to the future of Bates in an address shot through with optimism, offering two initial recommendations.

Two keys to the future

“We need to make a virtue of our particularity, our distinctive history and identity,” Spencer said. “To engage the large, complex, dizzying forces that are coming at us, we have to stand somewhere, and we have to stand somewhere firm.”

At the conclusion of the Reunion Address, alumni begin to rise for a standing ovation. Photograph by H. Lincoln Benedict '09.

That solid foundation comprises Bates’ founding values, its location and its reputation. In a world that, more than ever, demands that liberal arts colleges justify the investment that families and society make in them, these qualities — in particular, Bates’ bedrock egalitarianism — confer institutional significance and distinctiveness.

Bates, she said, practices “not a vague kind of politically correct inclusiveness, but instead the inclusiveness that says, we are here to encounter each other as humans with potential, with gifts; and the greatest opportunity that anybody can have as a human is the opportunity to realize those gifts.

“That’s in the fabric of who we are.”

She added, “We have been ahead of our time since 1855. And that puts us in a great position to look at a world that is changing very fast.”

Spencer drew especially warm applause as she cited Maine and Lewiston as advantages to Bates. “There is no place that I would rather find myself than in Maine, which embodies ruggedness and self-sufficiency, the elemental and the substantial,” she explained.

“And that includes Lewiston,” which she described as a fascinating community “that gives our students amazing opportunities to interact with the complicated world around them on a very granular level.”

Spencer said that "the fact that our rigor and our tough-mindedness are encompassed within a community that is kind and respectful is a phenomenal strength." Photograph by H. Lincoln Benedict '09.

The third factor in establishing particularity, she said, is an outstanding reputation — which Bates has. But the college must also address the fact that “our reputational capital far exceeds our financial capital.” That’s a serious problem for a college whose educational quality, “with the kind of personal attention at every level that we give, is expensive. It is not going to get fundamentally cheaper in our lifetimes.”

Still, Spencer said, “I would much rather sign up for a job at a college with a fantastic reputation, based on excellent fundamentals, but with money to raise, than a college with lots of money without great fundamentals or a great culture.”

For her second overall prescription, Spencer told the Reunion gathering that “we need to make a virtue of our scale.”

Smallness enables Bates to educate each student “in a community…that takes as its project the development of the whole person, and situates the search for knowledge in a framework of values. This is something I think Bates does incredibly well.”

Rigor, kindness, engagement

“There are many parts of this world where respect for other human beings is low, where kindness is really undervalued,” Spencer said.

“I think kindness is not to be underestimated. The fact that our rigor and our tough-mindedness are encompassed within a community that is kind and respectful is a phenomenal strength.”

Pursuing the theme of Bates progressiveness, Spencer also reminded her listeners that Bates is ahead of the game in both interdisciplinarity and in robust engagement.

Students go out into the community and the world, she said, and “they learn. They bring that back into the classroom, and they go out again with an intellectual framework taken from the classroom. It’s a virtuous cycle,” and “we are ahead of the game in recognizing that.”

“We need to be porous to the world, we need to be intentional about what we’re doing here and we need to make sure our students go out and get the broadest possible experiences they can,” Spencer concluded.

“Our graduates need to be global participants in a highly competitive world, and it’s our job to make sure that we prepare them for this reality.”