Washington — President Obama has tapped another community-college leader for a top higher-education post, the Portland Press Herald reports. Glenn Cummings, who is dean of institutional advancement at Southern Maine Community College and a former speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, will become assistant secretary of education for vocational and adult education.

Mr. Cummings was one of the first high-profile Maine politicians to back Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president and was recommended for the job by U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican, according to the newspaper.

The announcement comes a week after Mr. Obama chose Martha J. Kanter, chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, to be under secretary of education, the department’s No. 2 post.

In 2002, when Mr. Cummings was chairman of the Maine House education committee, he sponsored legislation that combined the state’s technical colleges under a new community-college umbrella. Since the bill was enacted, enrollment in the state’s two-year institutions has grown by 40 percent, and enrollment at Southern Maine Community College has doubled, according to the Press Herald.

Mr. Obama also named Jane Oates, who is executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education and a former top education aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts, to serve as the Labor Department’s assistant secretary for employment and training administration, according to The Washington Post. —Kelly Field