UMass Magazine Online

Winter 2003

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All my best friends are here

One giant molecule

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The Landscape Beautiful

Around the Pond

Remembering Sarah Hamilton

Daniel J. Fitzgibbons




	photo by Felice Cohen '92

If ever a history of campus administrators is written, one chapter should be devoted to longtime New Students Program Director Sarah J. Hamilton ’70G, who died Nov. 8 of peritoneal cancer.
Until her retirement last year after three decades as director of NSP, Hamilton provided a “positive yet realistic” introduction to UMass Amherst for more than 120,000 first-year students and their parents. While NSP focused on preparing new students for their first weeks on campus, the program’s real goal was to leave them looking forward to the fall and the start of their college careers.

But her true legacy may be the next generation of leaders who worked at NSP as student counselors and support staff. Employing a finely honed ability to recognize the potential of applicants, Hamilton personally selected the counselors and schooled them in her orientation philosophy, which emphasized information and guidance and allowing new students to make informed choices. “Don’t put a bean up their nose,” she would tell the counselors, urging them to allow new students to make their own judgments about UMass.

Bound by common cause and the grueling work schedule, NSP staffers responded to Hamilton’s professionalism, ideals and sense of loyalty. It was a winning combination. The NSP evaluations consistently received top marks from parents and new students.

Hamilton took a keen interest in her counselors and stayed in touch with them long after graduation. NSP counselors went on to a variety of remarkable careers ranging from medicine to business and, not surprisingly, higher education. Many credit her lessons and advice for their success. As former NSP staffer Lloyd Adalist remembered, “Even after 25 years, I still compare all the supervisors I’ve ever had with Sarah, and she always comes out on top ... and probably always will.”

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