Search Committee Vice-Chairman Henry Thomas III was adamant about the need for an open search, reiterating a commitment to it throughout the forum.

“Holding public forums on all the campuses and leaving the door and the phone and the e-mail open for input and suggestions,” Thomas said. “But you communicate what people were saying in these forums on the web and give them full access to that information. Through the various web portals, people will have the opportunity to weigh in what their opinions are.”

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Secretary Paul Reville is looking for diversity as well as strength among the cantidates.

“My first interest as a board member is ensuring that it’s a strong, fair, transparent process and that we have a diverse pool of candidates,” Reville said. “And then as we look forward to the kind of leadership we need in the future, we’re looking for somebody with vision, we’re looking for somebody with an understand of this sector, but at the same time an understanding of opportunities and challenges outside of the sector.

“We’re looking for somebody with experience and a track record of working with government, because government is obviously a part of this and we’re looking for a creative leader because I think we have some challenges that we’re facing that we need to solve,” he added

However, Jan Greenwood, of Greenwood Asher Associates, a firm hired by the UMass Presidential Search Committee to assist in the process, said that the candidate search is being kept confidential.
“Public searches dwindle candidate pools because job searching loses money for their current institutions,” she said.

Greenwood added that public searches draw fewer applicants than confidential searches. However, once the Committee decides on finalists for the presidency, those names become public.
According to Thomas, the Search Committee has yet to decide whether or not to involve the full Board of Trustees in interviewing each finalist in depth.

“Once a finalist is named, those individuals become public,” Thomas said. “Massachusetts law gives us the opportunity to keep the search private until it gets to the finalists, as it relates to the who, not in terms of the process,” he said. This means that the process is public and open while the names of the candidates are kept private.

Brandon Tower, president of the UMass Amherst Student Government Association, was concerned about not only transparency, but ensuring the role of the University’s students.

“We want a president that’s responsible to students as a constituent body,” Tower said. “Outreach is a big part of that. The next president doesn’t have to follow student ideas to a ‘T,’ but we would like to see someone who will take them into consideration.”

Reville backed Tower’s views on the role of students in the process.

“Massachusetts higher education is distinguished by student participation,” he said.

Greenwood added that she had participated in over 1,000 similar searches, but that Tuesday featured the greatest number of students in attendance she had ever seen at a function not in the afternoon and where pizza was not served.

Tower believes that the student population isn’t sufficiently represented by the online forums.
“I think web forums are inefficient,” Tower said. “I think they have the right ideas and the right intentions, but students should have more participation.”

The qualities of the next president each participant desired varied according to their interest, but many forum attendees expressed a desire for the next president to make a commitment to the mission of UMass.

“The president should cultivate new strategies in relation to the land-grant tradition,” said Lisa Henderson, a communications professor.

Alumnus Bob Shaughnessy said that he’d like to see the next president work on a previous idea.
According to Shaughnessy, the president should “build on the ‘Wilson trajectory.’”
“He put us on a good path and we’re looking to build on that, not go backwards,” he said.

A representative of the Environmental Performance Advisory Committee praised President Wilson’s green initiatives, especially the commitment to be climate neutral by 2030 and said that the next president should share the same commitment.

“Vision is part of the perspective of having a new leader,” Reville said. “There are a variety of directions in which a university could move at this point, facing the current challenges. From moving to a highly entrepreneurial model to refocusing in on garnering a greater level of state support to describing a public mission and seeking more autonomy while at the same time bringing accountability to that public mission.”
Reville continued that a good balance and perspective is necessary in a strong candidate.

He added, “So I think there are a number of things that have to be balanced; how you balance the teaching function, for example, against the research function; what kinds of activities you’re willing to undertake in order to garner revenue and what are the implications of taking on those activities to the public mission of the university. So it’s in that area that I think the board will look to the candidates to find what the mission is for the University. And then somebody with whom we can work as board members over time in shaping that mission, because the board has a lot of ideas in terms of the future of higher education.”

Matthew M. Robare can be reached at [email protected].