LEWISTON — Clayton Spencer, Bates College’s new president, is a former federal prosecutor. She worked with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate and spent the last 15 years at Harvard University, helping double its financial aid budget and open its doors to more middle-class students.

Spencer said she respects Bates’ storied history. She has ideas for its future, and she jokes about slipping into a ceramics class to dust up lackluster pottery skills, if they’ll have her.

On the job since July, she’ll officially become Bates College’s eighth president in October.

Spencer, 57, grew up in then-small town Davidson, N.C., the daughter of a college president. She owns a home on Swan’s Island, off the coast by Bar Harbor. For more than 25 years her family has summered in Maine.

“I was not randomly looking to be a college president,” Spencer said during an interview in her new Lane Hall office Tuesday. “Maine is just a magnet for everything I love. The fact that Bates is located in Maine is huge. I also happen to completely identify with the values of Bates.”

The 157-year-old college was inclusive early, becoming the first in New England to admit women and African Americans. During the presidential search process, Spencer said she read all she could about its founders and Lewiston-Auburn. She snuck up one day, unannounced, walked the campus and ate lunch on Gritty’s deck overlooking the Androscoggin River.

“I just thought it was fantastic. Loved the campus, loved Lewiston. I thought Lewiston and Auburn together were amazing,” she said. “I wanted to make sure this was a place I could visualize living and being before I took the search to the next step.”

Spencer, most recently Harvard’s vice president for policy, spent her first months at Bates firming up a senior leadership team. That included a new hire for vice president of advancement, or fundraising.

Priorities already high on her list: raising money for financial aid and affordability.

Bates is frequently among the most expensive liberal arts colleges in the country, at a cost of $57,235 this year. About 43 percent of students receive need-based grants that cover, on average, two-thirds of that.

“I would like us to be offering aid to more students, and as generous as possible,” Spencer said.

She worked on expanding financial aid during her time at Harvard, helping to create a program that eliminated the family’s portion of tuition, room and board in households with incomes under $60,000. (Students still had to contribute a small amount.)

“It’s not that (affordability) is a personal hobbyhorse I brought from Harvard,” Spencer said. “You don’t want to just educate the sons and daughters of leaders of the last generation who’ve already made it; you want to educate the leaders of the next generation.

“A lot of those really bright, talented students are not going to be from families who can afford the price tag we charge,” she said. “So it’s fundamental to the role of education as an engine of opportunity that we have generous financial aid.”

Spencer considers the college’s size an asset, important for the level of student-faculty contact it encourages. She envisions the college staying at around 2,000 students.

“When we offer a Bates education, we’re saying, ‘We’ll know you. You will know your professors. Your professors will work with you,'” she said. “From the first day of drop-off to the last lobster roll at commencement, we need to be all over the project of providing a strong, grounded experience for these students who come here.”

Issues she sees coming to the forefront: How to think about technology in a liberal arts setting, how to break free of “disciplinary silos,” approaching more problems across subjects, and how to treat the arts as a “powerful component of the curriculum,” not an add-on.

“I want us to be at the leading edge among liberal arts colleges in tackling the major challenges that are coming at the whole industry, and I want us to be known for that, and I think we can be,” Spencer said. “It’s part of our DNA to be forward-looking and progressive and pragmatic; we’re not stuck in the mud.”

Spencer has two children. Son Will, 24, works in New York City. Daughter Ava, 21, is a senior at Harvard. Her daughter is the fourth Ava Clayton in the family.

As a child, Spencer was “called Clayton because there was already one Ava in the household,” she said. “I always loved the fact that I had a name that was passed down.”

She’s enjoyed getting to know Lewiston, admiring the mills’ architecture and the river. Interests include movies, theater, traveling and getting outdoors.

“I run or walk pretty much everyday,” Spencer said. “I have a little motorboat I zoom around in around Swan’s Island, a Boston Whaler. I am the scourge of the high seas.”

Her inner “higher education junkie,” she said, loves that she now lives at the corner of College Street and Campus Avenue.

Bates will hold its annual convocation Tuesday. Classes start Wednesday.

kskelton@sunjournal.com