Ava Clayton Spencer Named Eighth President of Bates

Courtesy Bates

LEWISTON, Maine – The Bates College Board of Trustees has elected Ava 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.

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.