Tufts University administrator Leah Rosovsky ’78 will assume the role of vice president for strategy and programs at Harvard beginning in January, University President Drew G. Faust announced Tuesday.

Though her title will differ slightly, Rosovsky, a dean at Tufts School of Arts and Sciences, will fill the hole left by vice president for policy A. Clayton Spencer, who left Harvard earlier this year to become president of Bates College.

“I’m incredibly excited about doing this and getting the chance to work with President Faust and her team,” Rosovsky said in an interview with The Crimson. “The job is really about advancing the president’s strategic agenda and vision for the University.”

Rosovsky said she will work directly on Faust’s One University efforts, the University’s international initiatives, and continued efforts to attract top-level students and faculty across the University.

Rosovsky has been executive administrative dean at Tufts since 2006, where she has championed increases in financial aid and sophisticated budget planning.

She said she has been in conversation with Faust about the position for several months, and that she accepted the job in early November.

When she takes her place in Massachusetts Hall in January, Rosovsky will be returning to a University where she spent much of her professional career, first as an FAS fundraising officer and planner, and later as FAS associate dean for administrative planning.

“In returning to Harvard, Leah Rosovsky brings deep strategic expertise and an extraordinary breadth of accomplishment in higher education to this role,” Faust said in a statement. “She has proven to be adept at formulating and executing on high-level strategic objectives and at working with administrators and faculty to advance institutional goals.”

Rosovsky—who also holds a degree from Harvard Business School—said that her diverse experience at the University positions her well for the job.

“I learned an enormous amount at Harvard both as a student and then working there.... To be able to come back, to be a part of that, and to advance an agenda for an institution I feel so strongly about and have such strong ties to is really a rare opportunity,” she said.

Rosovsky is not the first in her family to serve as a Harvard administrator.

Her father Henry Rosovsky was a longtime Harvard professor and administrator. An expert in Japanese economic history, the elder Rosovsky was chair of the economics department from 1969 to 1972 and served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1973 to 1984 and again from 1990 to 1991.

In 1984 and again in 1987, he served as acting president of the University. He became a member of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, in 1985.

—Staff writer Nicholas P. Fandos can be reached at nicholasfandos@college.harvard.edu.