As one of the faculty members of the Search Committee (along with Barbara Osborne, Shaw Ling Hsu, John Brigham, Priscilla Clarkson, and Marilyn Billings), I can say that the process was a very good one: the search firm and many of you helped us recruit dozens of outstanding applicants, making the final decision very difficult. I think all of us felt that there was not an ounce of manipulation to the search and that we came to this group of finalists purely on the merits, with no acrimony among the search committee. It was a refreshingly uplifting experience.

But now the job turns to you. The opinion of faculty and librarians - especially if those opinions are registered in large numbers -- will matter a lot to President Wilson as he makes his final decision. So I want to encourage you to make time to meet with each candidate, either at the specially designed faculty meeting time - 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. - or at the open forum for all members of the campus community, from 2:45 to 3:45.

Note that the first candidate will be here this coming Tuesday, April 15 (with the others coming on Thursday, Friday, and the following Tuesday). You can view the schedule for the four candidates' visits at http://www.massachusetts.edu/amherstsearch/campusvisits.html.

Finally, so that we can communicate the views of the faculty as a whole, we have developed an online comment form on the MSP website at http://umassmsp.org/chancellor_visit_evaluation_form. Please be sure to submit your views ASAP.

Max Page, MSP President