Courtesy of umass.edu

The search for a new chancellor of the University of Massachusetts’ Amherst campus is now taking shape with the final candidates expected to be chosen by early April.

The search committee, which has an undergraduate and graduate member representing the student body, met on Feb. 25 for its sixth meeting since last August.

Robert Connolly, a spokesman for the UMass system, said the search committee is “looking for somebody who demonstrates leadership, management skills and a true passion for education that can inspire everyone on campus.”

The committee began with a large field of candidates and is now working to bring this number down, Connolly said.

They will be conducting interviews before meeting again in early April to make their decision. Only then will the names of the final three or more candidates become public.

The finalists will begin holding meetings with students around campus. President Jack Wilson will then make a recommendation to the search committee before the final vote, which is expected to occur this fall.

“In recent memory, there hasn’t been a recommended candidate who has been turned down by committee,” said Connolly.

John Lombardi, the previous chancellor of the Amherst campus, resigned to become the president of Louisiana State University over the summer. Dr. Thomas Cole has been serving as an interim chancellor until a permanent candidate is chosen.

In addition to providing leadership for the Amherst campus, the chancellor has other significant administrative responsibilities. According to Connolly, the chancellor is required to “bring in additional faculty, improve the core academic functions and research enterprise and oversee the building boom of recent years here at UMass.”

The search committee encourages student engagement on this issue.

“We have had a lot of electronic communication so far from students,” said Connolly.

All messages are then forwarded to President Wilson.

Varun Vuppala, a UMass senior majoring in history, thinks students would take more interest in this process if the issue were more in the public domain.

“If we had more students on the search committee and if the proceedings of the committee were made public, students would be able to follow along at the very least,” said Vuppala.

Students and other members of the UMass community can voice their opinions via the chancellor search Web site www.massachusetts.edu/amherstsearch/index.html.

Pamela Lawn can be reached at [email protected].