Search for UMass-Amherst head narrowed to 4

The search for a new chancellor for the University of Massachusetts' flagship campus in Amherst was narrowed yesterday to a field of four finalists, including one from an overseas university.

The finalists are Martin Hall, deputy vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town; Robert C. Holub, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee; Harris Pastides, vice president for research and health sciences at the University of South Carolina and executive director of the University of South Carolina Research Foundation; and Satish K. Tripathi, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Jack M. Wilson, UMass president, said in a telephone interview that he expects to choose a candidate for the job in approximately two weeks, after each of the finalists visits the Amherst campus and meets with various stakeholders, including faculty and students.

"The search committee did a terrific job," Wilson said. "The quality of the candidates they unearthed were absolutely superb."

The UMass Board of Trustees will vote on Wilson's pick either at its regular meeting in June or a special meeting before then. A 25-member search committee, appointed by the board last summer, voted on the finalists late yesterday afternoon.

The new chancellor will replace John Lombardi, who left the post last summer to become president of the Louisiana State University System. Lombardi had been slated to lose the chancellorship at the end of this academic year as part of a controversial series of leadership changes, which prompted the Amherst faculty to deliver a vote of no confidence in Wilson and the trustees.

Thomas W. Cole Jr., a former Clark Atlanta University president, has been filling in as interim chancellor.