{"id":70979,"date":"2014-01-15T10:42:34","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T15:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=70979"},"modified":"2021-02-09T17:09:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T22:09:08","slug":"president-spencer-to-attend-white-house-summit-on-college-opportunity-jan-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/01\/15\/president-spencer-to-attend-white-house-summit-on-college-opportunity-jan-16\/","title":{"rendered":"President Spencer attends today’s White House summit on college opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bates<\/a>

Bates President Clayton Spencer<\/p><\/div>\n

Bates President Clayton Spencer joins fellow U.S. higher education leaders at a White House summit on college opportunity hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama today, Jan. 16.<\/p>\n

The event is bringing together college and university presidents and leaders from nonprofits, foundations, state governments and businesses across the country.<\/p>\n

It is livestreamed at www.whitehouse.gov\/live<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Senior administration officials scheduled to join the discussion include Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.<\/p>\n

In her first year at Bates, Spencer announced the Excellence and Opportunity initiative, to be funded in part by the $11.5 million Catalyst Fund gift<\/a> <\/strong>from current and past members of the Bates College Board of Trustees.<\/p>\n

The initiative reflects the college’s founding commitment to excellence and opportunity. “It is\u00a0central to our mission and history,” Spencer said.<\/p>\n

Established in 1855, Bates was from its beginning open to both men and women, recruiting students of limited means and matriculating African American students from the Civil War onward.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday this commitment means attracting and enrolling the very best students from a broad range of backgrounds and marshaling the resources to provide generous financial aid to support their education,” says Spencer. “Our current financial aid\u00a0program of more than $30 million in Bates-funded grants per year\u00a0reflects our\u00a0resolve to uphold\u00a0these values.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"President<\/a>

Bates President Clayton Spencer, who led the establishment of Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy, speaks at the program’s 10th anniversary event on Oct. 30, 2013. (Rose Lincoln\/Harvard)<\/p><\/div>\n

Forty-four percent of Bates students receive financial aid, and the average Bates financial aid package (grant, loan and student employment) is more than $40,000.<\/p>\n

Counter to national trends in student debt, Bates financial aid is largely composed of outright grants, and students with loans graduate with an average debt load of approximately $17,000, compared to the national average of approximately $27,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny excellent\u00a0liberal arts college, particularly one like Bates that has the advantage of a strong tradition of diversity\u00a0matched by equally strong\u00a0resources, has an ethical obligation to\u00a0provide\u00a0access to people who can\u2019t afford the very high cost it takes to mount a highly personalized residential liberal arts education,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n

Spencer, who has served as Bates president since 2012, is the former vice president for policy at Harvard University, where she played a central role in the reshaping and dramatic expansion of Harvard\u2019s financial aid program and in the creation of the Crimson Summer Academy, a program that brings high-achieving, economically disadvantaged local students to study at Harvard for six weeks each summer.<\/p>\n

Prior to Harvard, Spencer was chief education counsel for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources in the mid-1990s under its chair, the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Livestreamed at www.whitehouse.gov\/live, the event is hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":69947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[44,11009],"tags":[11048,10086,10935,10872],"class_list":["post-70979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enewsletter","category-the-college","tag-accessibility","tag-catalyst-fund","tag-clayton-spencer","tag-financial-aid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70979"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134748,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70979\/revisions\/134748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}