Senate Aide to Education Department

WASHINGTON — A key higher education policy aide to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will move to the Education Department, filling one of the many vacancies in higher education policymaking that have added up since President Obama won re-election last November. Spiros Protopsaltis, who has worked for two and a half years as a senior education policy adviser for the committee's Democrats, will join the Education Department's Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. That office has been without a leader since assistant secretary Carmel Martin left for the Center on American Progress, and has seen departures from other policymakers as well.