Bates Trustee Chair Mike Bonney '80, at left, shares a laugh with President-elect Clayton Spencer during her introduction to the campus on Dec. 4.

News Media

The New York Times

• Clayton Spencer, Harvard vice president, to lead Bates College

The Boston Globe

• Clayton Spencer, Harvard vice president, named Bates College president

Lewiston Sun Journal

• New president brings big vision to Bates College | Sun Journal

The Associated Press

• Maine college has new president

The AP story was also picked up by Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN); WLBZ-TV Channel 2 (NBC-Bangor); WCSH-TV Channel 6 (NBC-Portland); WMTW-TV Channel 8 (ABC-Portland), the Bangor Daily News, Kennebec Journal, Mainebiz, Morning Sentinel and Portland Press Herald.

The Harvard Crimson

• VP Spencer named president of Bates College

Harvard Magazine

• A. Clayton Spencer appointed President of Bates

Chronicle of Higher Education

• Key policy adviser at Harvard will be Bates College’s next president
• Appointment of Spencer named a “best” moment of 2011

Inside Higher Education

• Higher ed policy expert named Bates president

Nora Talks Bates (blog)

• The new President-elect
  Nora Brouder ’12 explains that Spencer was “just another mom in the parental sphere of my younger life.”

Social Media

Facebook

Below, a few of the Bates Facebook and Alumni Facebook comments about the election of Clayton Spencer as the eighth president of Bates College:

Twitter

Here’s a sample of Twitter comments:

From a Bates student: Clayton Spencer, new #batesprez, has quite the resume. Honored to welcome our newest Batesie!

From Williams College: Congrats to our own A. Clayton Spencer ’77, who leaves @Harvard to become 8th president of @Bates in July.

From a higher education observer in St. Louis: “To my mind,” the occasional twang in these videos of Clayton Spencer, new #batesprez, is a nice touch.

From a Bates Alumnus: “Bates College has new president via @BostonDotCom.

From a Bates alumna: “We can no longer, in our society, equate wealth with excellence in higher education.” A soundbite from #BatesPrez.

Webcast and Website

During the webcast of the presidential announcement, Carine Warsawski ’07 posted a status update on Facebook: “Watching live from a Starbucks in D.C. Way to go with the technology, Bates!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Co-produced by Bates Communications and Information and Library Services, the announcement webcast attracted 1,098 unique viewers in 17 countries. People watched on various devices and operating systems (Android, BlackBerry, iOs), including 129 iPads.

The day of the announcement, Dec. 4, drew approximately 40 percent more visitors than usual to the Bates website (16,880 vs. an average daily total of 12,000).

Viewers watched the webcast from 41 states:

Viewers watched the webcast from 17 countries:

Burundi
Canada
Cyprus
Denmark
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
India
Israel
Japan
Malaysia
Netherlands
Peru
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States

Multimedia

Click here to view the embedded video.

Six days prior to the campus announcement, Bates Communications staffers traveled to Harvard to interview, video and photograph Clayton Spencer. The session yielded 11 video segments about her life, work and vision that attracted 6,668 plays.

• Diversity and Excellence: 1,686 plays
• Why Bates?: 1,153
• Educating the Whole Person: 724
• Bates as an Educational Leader: 489
• The Liberal Arts: 471
• Peter Gomes ’65: 453
• Kennedy and Washington, D.C.: 379
• Higher Education as the Family Business: 345
• My Intellectual Awakening: 331
• Leadership: 323
• Access and Affordability: 314
  

Bates President-elect Clayton Spencer, standing on the slate hearth at right, talks to faculty and staff during an informal meet-and-greet on Dec. 5.

Learn more about President-elect Clayton Spencer.

“I have a question for you,” Clayton Spencer told Bates faculty and staff in New Commons’ Fireplace Lounge. Standing on the slate hearth so everyone could see her over the crowd, Bates’ new president-elect asked: “Is it fun to work here?”

The answer, of course, was an emphatic “yes” — more evidence of the good feelings that have accompanied the Dec. 4 announcement that Spencer, currently vice president for policy at Harvard, will assume the role of Bates’ eighth president in July.

The Monday morning meet-and-greet was an informal opportunity for staff and faculty to shake Spencer’s hand and look her in the eye — something the president-elect took in stride considering the 100-plus people who jammed the lounge for the opportunity.

Full of gratitude for the college’s open-armed welcome, and praise for the classy way Bates introduced her Sunday as its next leader, Spencer took a couple of questions during her informal address from the hearth.

Not surprisingly after a year in which Bates and peer schools have been criticized, if not quite fairly, for their costs of attendance, one questioner asked for Spencer’s thoughts about increasing access and affordability. “It’s a really simple but really expensive problem,” she said: The college must increase the amount of money it raises for financial aid.

“Bates is already running very lean and mean,” she said. The college is devoting as much of its budget to financial aid now as it can. “We need to raise a ton of money for financial aid.”

“Fund-raising will be a fun dimension of the job for me.” She added, “Bates is a great product to sell” to prospective donors.

Another questioner, perhaps thinking of the college’s recent symposium about college costs, wondered if colleges like Bates are operating with a sustainable financial model–high sticker prices with steep discounts. Spencer, reputed to be very smart and very nice about it, responded with a capsule analysis of decades’ worth of American economic trends leading to the conclusion that, indeed, that model isn’t sustainable without some changes.

“We really have to get very disciplined about costs,” she said, as well as fund-raising. On the bright side, while admitting that she hasn’t yet had a chance to pick the brains of the advancement staff, Spencer shared her impression that there are significant fund-raising opportunities waiting for Bates. “I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t optimistic.”

The Rev. Bill Blaine-Wallace, Bates’ multifaith chaplain, took a minute at the gathering to chat with a writer about the president-elect. “A native North Carolinian with two theology degrees — what more can I say?” laughed Blaine-Wallace, who is a native North Carolinian with two theology degrees.

More seriously, though, he described her as “a great choice. She’ll bring a global perspective and connections that augur well for a new day for Bates.”

Bates President-elect Clayton Spencer.

For Clayton Spencer, Bates College’s next president, the process that brought her here “was not a search at all,” as she told the campus community during her introduction to the college on Dec. 4.

“It was a case of love at first sight.”

And Bates is inclined to love her right back, if the effusively warm greeting that Spencer received during that all-college gathering was any indication.

Elected the previous day by unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees as Bates’ eighth leader, Spencer met the college in an event that drew a standing-room-only crowd to the Gray Athletic Building and culminated a week of intense covert preparation and excitement.

In her first speech to the college that she will oversee starting July 1, Spencer laid out the challenges facing the college and higher education in general. She reminded her listeners of the value of a liberal arts education, and Bates’ bold role in advancing that education.

“More than ever,” she said, “we need the frameworks provided by the liberal arts” to connect values, knowledge and action — in the words of the late Rev. Peter Gomes ’65, who “said it better than anyone could, we need to learn “to live in the full implication of our human gifts.”

And she offered a call to action, asking the college “to embrace with energy and confidence what the college already does so well, even as we challenge ourselves — always — to do better.

“And, finally, we need to make sure the world knows what we’re up to. More people need to understand what a serious, distinctive and wonderful education Bates has to offer.”

Spencer moves into 204 Lane Hall on July 1, 2012. She currently serves Harvard University as vice president for policy — holding, according to The Harvard Crimson, the “most far-reaching portfolio of any Harvard administrator” besides that institution’s president.

Bates Trustee Chair Mike Bonney '80, at left, shares a laugh with President-elect Clayton Spencer during her introduction to the campus on Dec. 4.

In addition to a record of strategic accomplishment at Harvard reaching back to 1997, Spencer’s resume includes six years of service to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources as chief education counsel, working with the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. As an educational leader, she has taken on as a central concern the question of making higher education more accessible and affordable. Learn more about Clayton Spencer.

The gathering on a sunny, breezy Sunday afternoon was Bates-lavish, featuring jazz by the Three Point Trio, a cappella by the Deansmen and the Merimanders (who blew Spencer a kiss with Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)”) and a reception afterward.

Nancy Cable, Bates vice president of enrollment and external affairs and the college’s interim president since last July 1, extended a welcome to the crowd filling the Gray Athletic Building. Michael Chu ’80, who co-chaired the presidential search committee with Valerie Smith 75, reviewed the search, and Trustee Chair Michael Bonney ’80 presented Spencer.

With Spencer’s identity still a mystery as the assembly began, Cable pointed out that the new president is only the eighth at an institution founded in 1855. “The selection of a college president is a difficult task indeed,” she told the crowd, “requiring dedication, tireless effort, a thoughtful vision for the institution’s future and a deep love of this place.”

That set the stage, conceptually and literally, for Chu. After thanking the members of the presidential search committee for their eight months of hard work, he explained the criteria the committee was obliged to meet — and offered the insight that “the committee’s assessment of candidates was remarkably congruent.”

Bonney brought some fun to his presentation of the new president, teasing the audience by almost-but-not-quite spilling her name before he summed up Spencer’s considerable accomplishments. One member of the search committee, he recalled, told her that Spencer’s “references were so amazing that he honestly had a hard time getting one of his reference calls off the phone.”

That reference called her “one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” and “a true thought leader who can work with any constituency.”

The Bates community extended an enthusiastic welcome to President-elect Clayton Spencer.

As her image flashed onto big screens flanking the stage, Bonney presented Spencer, who was met with the first of two standing ovations she received during the gathering.

If issues facing Bates and liberal arts education made up the heart of her address, she made sure to include the personal touch too, mentioning her long affection for Maine — and her awareness of real Mainahs’ feelings about folks from away.

She also said “hi” to her mother and father in Davidson, N.C., with the hope that they figured out how to find the live webcast of the event on their computer.

Daughter of a historian who served two colleges as president, Spencer said that she “learned very early to prize the special alchemy of people and ideas that communities like this make possible.

“Later, I lost my heart to Maine. You can’t imagine the joy it brings me to knit together these two deep passions, right here, with you, at Bates College, in Lewiston.”

Downloadable photos of President Spencer:

• http://abacus.bates.edu/pix/BatesPresident2012v.jpg
• http://abacus.bates.edu/pix/BatesPresident2012h.jpg

A. Clayton Spencer elected eighth president of Bates

The Bates College Board of Trustees has elected A. Clayton Spencer, currently vice president for policy at Harvard University, to become the eighth president of Bates, effective July 1, 2012.

Spencer is widely regarded as an extraordinarily effective and collaborative higher education leader who has worked with four Harvard presidents to shape key initiatives over the past 15 years. A graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, prior to Harvard Spencer served at the national level as chief education counsel in the U.S. Senate, working for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Spencer will succeed Nancy J. Cable, who has served Bates as interim president since July 1, 2011. Elaine Hansen, the seventh president of Bates, stepped down from the position last June, after nine years, to accept appointment as executive director of the Center for Talented Youth at The Johns Hopkins University. Cable, who did not enter the presidential search, will continue to serve Bates in a senior leadership role.

Board Chair Michael W. Bonney announced the election and introduced Spencer to the Bates community this afternoon at a campus event attended by faculty, students and staff, as well as college trustees, alumni and others.

In making the announcement Bonney said, “The Bates Board of Trustees has unanimously and enthusiastically agreed that Clayton Spencer is the best possible choice to lead Bates at this key time in the college’s history. She is a true national leader in higher education, and she understands Bates in a very personal way, endorsing its innovative approach to the academic curriculum and its unpretentious ambition for excellence in all aspects of the liberal arts experience in the 21st century. We couldn’t be more thrilled to welcome her as our president-elect.”

Spencer said in her remarks, “I am honored and humbled to be asked to serve as the next President of Bates College.  It is such a privilege to be invited to join this very special community — on campus and beyond — and to imagine our work together as we write the next chapter in the life of this remarkable institution.”

Spencer’s election follows an international search that began in June and drew what search committee members described as a very large, diverse and extremely competitive pool of candidates. Committee co-chairs Valerie Smith and Michael Chu said that the process attracted a deep and talented pool of about 300 applicants, “including sitting presidents, accomplished faculty deans and provosts, foundation presidents and others. Bates’ unique position and values resonated with the applicants in a profound and inspiring way.”

The 14-member search committee, which included Bates trustees, faculty members, administrators, alumni and a student, was assisted by the search firm Storbeck/Pimentel & Associates.

Statements about the election of Spencer as Bates president
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said, “Bates has made a brilliant choice. Clayton Spencer has been an astute and always forthright adviser to Harvard’s presidents, deans, and governing boards for the last 15 years, bringing her exceptional intellect, her wisdom, her unfailing sense of humor and her deep commitment to higher education and its fundamental values to bear on the wide range of issues facing the university. While it is hard for me to imagine Harvard without her, it is also wonderful to anticipate Clayton making what I know will be a distinctive mark as the leader of one of the nation’s most distinguished liberal arts colleges.”

Adam Falk, president of Williams College, where Spencer is a trustee, said, “It’s hard to imagine finding a better person to fill this role at Bates. Clayton has an extraordinary record of thinking deeply about important problems and issues in higher education. Her insightful service on the Williams board has made a lasting, valuable impact across the entire spectrum of our work. She understands the liberal arts college, and a presidency is an absolutely natural sequel to her remarkable career. I am so excited now to have the chance to work with her as a fellow president in the NESCAC [New England Small Colleges Athletic Association] — and a national colleague in the liberal arts.”

Diana Sorensen, dean of arts and humanities for the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said, “Clayton will be a transformative leader for Bates. Faculty and students alike will be drawn to her understanding of the academic life and to her delight in the joy and the power of ideas.

“She is a terrific listener and so good at getting people to work together. Her focus is on the desired outcome. Not only can she articulate the vision, but she knows how to get there.”

Terry Hartle, senior vice president for the Division of Government and Public Affairs of the American Council on Education, said of Spencer, “I’ve always seen Clayton as a potential college president. She is a superb choice for Bates. She’s usually the smartest person in the room, but doesn’t act like it. She wants to hear what everyone in the room thinks, and then shape an outcome that incorporates the variety of viewpoints. She builds consensus, and she reconciles divergent views and articulates a way forward.”

“And Clayton has a unique sense for the public face of higher education. She is aware of the issues faced by highly selective colleges, fundamentally understands how the country is changing and knows how to respond to those changes in terms of policy.”

Financial aid focus
In Washington and at Harvard, Spencer has been known for her passionate commitment to access, affordability, and excellence in higher education.

William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial at Harvard College, said, “Clayton is one of the nation’s and the world’s foremost policy experts on higher education. Among her many areas of expertise is college access and affordability, and she played a crucial role in developing and implementing our revolutionary financial aid program. Her efforts have insured that students of excellence from all economic and ethnic backgrounds can aspire to a Harvard education.

She has also worked on a wide array of public policy issues in Washington, D.C., and in Cambridge with four Harvard presidents. I have been blessed to work closely with her on every aspect of admission and financial aid during her time at Harvard. Her contributions have transformed Harvard in countless ways and future generations of Harvard students will benefit from her tenure. She is a person of stunning intellect and character. We will miss her rare combination of heart and head, and we know that, like Harvard, Bates will benefit enormously from her leadership.”

Spencer’s service as a key U.S. Senate staffer on education, 1993–97
Spencer began to exert important influence on national higher education policy in 1993 in her role as chief education counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, then chaired by the Senator Kennedy. She managed the committee’s education staff and directed the legislative process, focusing on federal student aid, science and research policy, education budget issues, and technology in education. During this period she gained a reputation for her ability to help move legislation through Congress.

Nick Littlefield, former chief of staff for Sen. Kennedy and now a partner and chair of the government strategies group for the Boston law firm Foley Hoag said, “If Senator Kennedy were here today, he would be the first to say that Clayton Spencer was as outstanding as anyone who ever worked in the Senate in higher education — pointing out her dedication, hard work, brilliance, common sense, team spirit and utter reliability.

“Clayton was in charge of higher education policy for Senator Kennedy, which meant for the Senate and for the country. She was a leader: She could master the substance of any issue; she could build the bipartisan alliances required to get the initiative passed; and then she could communicate the objective and details of the initiative in a compelling and charismatically persuasive way. She was one of the most respected staff directors I’ve ever known.

“It is no surprise to see Clayton as a college president. It was just a matter of when and where. I think she’s had many opportunities, but something about Bates captured everything she cares about: the history of the school, its potential and ambition, the special quality of the students and the faculty, the affection engendered in its alumni, and of course, the community and the state of Maine.”

Role at Harvard, 1997 to present
Since joining the Harvard administration in February 1997, Spencer has served a succession of presidents there (Neil L. Rudenstine, Lawrence H. Summers, Derek Bok, and now Faust), moving from the position of consultant into an associate vice presidency and then becoming the vice president in 2005 with a wide-ranging set of responsibilities.

In her current role, she develops and implements strategic priorities for the university on behalf of the president; directs policy analysis and oversees Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research; oversees administration, budget and staffing for the offices of the president and the provost; manages searches for deans and senior administrators; and serves as a liaison for the president with Harvard’s Council of Deans.

A 2008 profile by The Harvard Crimson described Spencer as “one of the most influential officials at Harvard.” She played a key role in a variety of university milestones over the past decade, including:

• The 1999 merger of Harvard and Radcliffe College (formerly a women’s college) and the subsequent transformation of Radcliffe to an institute for advanced study;
• The redesign and dramatic expansion of Harvard’s financial aid program and enhanced recruitment of low- and middle-income students;
• The organization and staffing of University-wide task forces on women faculty, the arts, common spaces, and international engagement;
• The design and implementation of a university-wide academic planning process; and
• The establishment and oversight of presidential initiatives, including the Crimson Summer Academy (a multi-year summer program for academically talented high school students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds), Presidential Public Service Grants, and the President’s January Innovation Grants.

Other biographical background
Ava Clayton Spencer, 56, was born in North Carolina and raised in an academic family.

Her father, Samuel Reid Spencer, Jr., a historian educated at Harvard, served as president of Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., from 1957 to 1968 and Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., from 1968 to 1983.

She attended North Mecklenburg High School in North Carolina and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H.

Spencer received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with highest honors in history and German, from Williams College, then earned a B.A. in theology from Oxford. She received a master’s degree in the study of religion from Harvard, then completed her J.D. degree from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, winner of the moot court competition, and chair of the Public Interest Council.

After clerking for Judge Rya W. Zobel of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, she practiced law at the Boston firm of Ropes & Gray from 1986 to 1989, then served from 1989 to 1993 as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston, prosecuting criminal cases, before joining the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and subsequently joining the Harvard administration.

Spencer is currently a trustee of Williams College, and she previously served as a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy. In 1997 she received the Williams College Bicentennial Medal for achievement in the field of education policy.

Spencer has written various articles and publications in the field of higher education policy and taught courses in federal higher education policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has served on an array of boards and panels, including the national board of the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education; the advisory board of the American Council on Education’s Center for Policy Analysis; and the Forum for the Future of Higher Education.

Spencer has two children — a son, Will, a 2010 graduate of New York University who works as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and a daughter, Ava, who is a junior at Harvard, majoring in stem cell and regenerative biology.

About Bates College
Bates is a leading private, highly selective, residential college devoted to undergraduate study in the traditional disciplines of the liberal arts and sciences as well as in emerging interdisciplinary programs. Bates’ campus is in Lewiston, Maine, and its academic activities reach worldwide.

Founded in 1855 by abolitionists who believed strongly in freedom, civil rights and the importance of a higher education for all who could benefit from it, the college has always admitted students without regard to race, religion, national origin or gender and was the first coeducational college in New England. Bates continues its commitment to access and inclusivity today with an average financial aid grant of $35,000.

Bates offers bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree to an enrollment of approximately 2,000 students from all over the United States and more than 60 other countries. With a student-faculty ratio of 10-to-1 and a commitment to supporting scholar-teachers of highest distinction, the college’s educational community challenges and supports students as they reach toward their full intellectual potential.