Southern Vt. College President Appointed To Federal Post

(Host) The president of Southern Vermont College in Bennington has been named as a senior policy adviser to the U.S. Department of Education.

College President Karen Gross will take a year's leave of absence to serve in the Office of the Undersecretary of Education.

Her work will focus on access, affordability and success in higher education for students from low income backgrounds - as well as other groups that don't traditionally earn degrees.

Gross says more than half the students at southern Vermont College are the first in their families to attend a four-year college.

She says her institution has developed programs that could work elsewhere for helping students she calls ‘vulnerable' to succeed.

(Gross) "Our work force and our economic health depend on getting more and more people who can enter the workforce to carry out the jobs of the future. And the price we will pay as a nation and as a state if we don't help vulnerable students will be enormous. And so this is an audience that we have to serve, and ... a hugely important population to serve."

(Host) Gross says Southern Vermont College focuses on careers in which there's a clear need -But students also get a liberal arts education.

The college was the first to sign on to the Obama Administration's 2020 Initiative, which shares similar goals.

Before becoming SVC's president in 2006, Gross was a law professor at New York Law School, specializing in consumer finance and indebtedness.

James Beckwith, the college's Chief Operating Officer, will serve as acting president during Gross's appointment, which starts later this month.