University of Massachusetts Amherst. Chancellor

The position of Chancellor, Amherst Campus, was created in 1970 when the office of the University President moved to Boston; the first person to serve as Chancellor was Oswald Tippo in 1970. The Chancellor is the chief administrative officer of the campus and is responsible for carrying out policies and procedures as established by the Board of Trustees and the University President. The Chancellor also coordinates the major administrative units of the campus, each supervised by the Deputy Chancellor or Vice Chancellor. The Chancellor is responsible for campus strategic planning and, in particular, for proposing and reviewing activities that involve different administrative units, such as budget reallocations, enrollment management, facilities planning and some labor relations. Externally, the Chancellor speaks for the campus to such audiences as trustees, state and federal legislators, alumni, state and local public officials, business and community leaders. In addition to the Deputy Chancellor and the Vice Chancellors, the Director of Athletics reports to the Chancellor, as does the Associate University Counsel, who advises the Chancellor and other members of the University community about legal issues.

Materials in the series Budget Documents (1908-2007) including news clippings (1885-2007) were first maintained in 1908 by Ralph J. Watts, the College’s first full-time Secretary to the President. Robert Hawley, his successor, became the College’s Treasurer in 1940. When the President’s Office moved to Boston, the early budget files became part of the Chancellor’s record. In 1969 the Office of Budgeting and Institutional Studies was created and it assumed budget responsibilities.

The Chancellor’s materials consist primarily of the administrative records of individual Chancellors; additional series document activities of the Chancellor’s Office. Since 1983, various Chancellors have issued The Chancellor’s Report, an annual report of the Amherst Campus. Included in the report is the state of the campus and special topics such as student needs, the future of the University, relationships with the Commonwealth, and budget issues. The Institutional Studies series is a collection of facts and reports, which have been compiled since 1960, including information on campus enrollment, degrees, programs, budget, and other institutional issues. The Chancellor’s Lecture Series (1974-2007) documents this on-campus lecture program and its participants; VHS tapes are available for most of these lectures.

The records of the Chancellor’s Office are organized into three major series (Individual Chancellors, Budget Documents and Institutional Studies) and a number of smaller series. Individual Chancellors has two major accretions: 1970-1982 and 1979-1984. These early records of the Chancellor’s Office are arranged by subject heading and then alphabetically within each grouping.