President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard University, to lead the National Economic Council, according to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

The council was created during the Clinton administration to coordinate the White House’s economic policies, and its directorship is one of the administration’s top three economic posts, along with the secretary of the treasury and the White House budget director, the Times reported.

Mr. Summers, a former chief economist at the World Bank, had been mentioned as a candidate for secretary of the treasury, a post he held under President Bill Clinton from 1999 to 2001. He became Harvard’s president after leaving that cabinet post, but resigned five years later amid a controversy over remarks he had made regarding the intrinsic abilities of women in science and mathematics.

In another higher-education-related appointment, Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor at Stanford University, has been named to lead the Democratic president-elect’s transition team on education policy, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ms. Darling-Hammond, who was an education adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for secretary of education in Mr. Obama’s cabinet. (Mr. Summers was on that list as well.) Her research and teaching has focused on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality, and educational equity. She is co-director of the School Redesign Network, established in 2000 at Stanford to promote research that seeks to improve secondary schools. —Eric Kelderman