James Jackson

Thank you very much I appreciate that.

I am pleased to be here today as part of kind of an important moment in the history of 
the Institute for Social Research, and the Center for Political Studies and of course 
the American National Election Studies. 

NSF has announced a large grant to support this work over the next five years under the 
leadership of U of M’s Arthur "Skip" Lupia and Stanford's Jon Krosnick.  I am especially 
pleased about Jon Krosnick since he is a graduate of U of M’s social psychology program 
and actually a former student of mine in many classes in research while he was here.  I 
am especially pleased to see him in this new leadership role.

Before introducing the president of the University of Michigan, let me just say a very 
few brief words, we are going to here about a lot of the substance later on, but I think 
a few brief words about some of the importance of standing contributions the study will 
make going into this next phase.  Obviously the centerpiece of the next study will be 
the state of the art hour long interviews with thousands of Americans face to face in 
their homes, both before and again after the November 2008 election.  In addition, a 
nationally representative sample of American adults will be recruited during 2007 and 
will answer questions once a month for 21 consecutive months, continuing well after the 
Presidential inauguration in 2009.  A third component of the new project is the 
collaboration with another long term national survey project, the National Longitudinal 
Survey.  In addition, and I think Skip’s going to talk about that later, there are going 
to be a number of new innovative measurement techniques for the first time in the 
American National Election Studies.  

Now it's my pleasure to introduce Professor Mary Sue Coleman, University of Michigan's 
thirteenth president.  She is a professor of Biological Chemistry in the Medical School, 
and a professor of chemistry in the College of Literature and Science and the Arts.  She 
will offer a few words of congratulations to the ANES researchers here at U of M and at 
Stanford University.  President Coleman.