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Members of a governor's commission investigating last month's Virginia Tech shootings will meet on the Blacksburg campus Monday and will get their first look inside the buildings where 32 people and the gunman died.

The campus visit will give the Virginia Tech Incident Review Panel a chance to gather specific information about what happened on April 16 and how university officials, police and emergency medical providers responded during the crisis.

"I'm hopeful that we'll get a more detailed version of the timeline of what occurred and what the decisionmaking process was," said the panel's chairman, retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Gerald Massengill.

This will be the second of four public meetings for the panel, which is expected to produce preliminary findings and recommendations by August.

Gov. Tim Kaine has asked the eight-member panel to examine all aspects of the shootings, including how university and police officials responded to the emergency and how troubled gunman Seung-Hui Cho was handled by the university, the courts and the mental health system.

Tech President Charles Steger asked Kaine to appoint the panel and said the university will cooperate fully with the inquiry.

"It's been our intent all along to be as helpful to the panel as possible in providing all the information and as accurate information that we can," said Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski.

Kaine said last week that the panel "has so far faced no problems getting any questions answered they wanted or any information."

"I do think for the purposes of their investigation, the more access the better," Kaine said.

The panel will meet Monday at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center. It will hold a closed-door session to discuss aspects of the police investigation, including Cho's student and mental health records. Police then will accompany the panel on tours of West Ambler Johnston Hall, the dormitory where two students were shot dead, and Norris Hall, where Cho killed 30 people before taking his own life. The building tours will be closed to the public and the press.

The panel also will hear public presentations from Steger and other Tech administrators, the heads of the Tech and state police departments, members of the Tech rescue squad and officials at Montgomery Regional Hospital.

The meeting also will include a public comment period beginning at 3 p.m.

The sessions should help the panel assemble a timeline of what occurred on the campus and evaluate decisions made by university administrators and police during the crisis. Massengill has expressed interest in learning more about what occurred in the 2 ¹₂ hours between the shootings in West Ambler Johnston Hall and Norris Hall.

Some critics contend that Tech officials waited too long to notify students and employees of the first shooting incident, which occurred shortly after 7 a.m., and should have considered canceling classes after the dormitory killings.

During the panel's first meeting on May 10, members said they will be cautious as they assess the actions of police and university officials. Massengill told reporters that day that the time gap between the two shootings "was not a vacuum."

"It was not like law enforcement officials and college administrators were sitting there doing nothing during those two hours, and I think our report will show what they were doing," Massengill said. "They were acting on information they had at that time. I think you're going to find that that gap was filled with plenty of action."

Massengill and consultants assisting the panel met privately in Richmond earlier this month with campus, state and federal law enforcement officials to discuss the shootings. Massengill said the briefing indicated that "it was a very effective and a very successful response" by law enforcement, but added that the panel needs more information.

The efforts of emergency medical responders and hospitals that treated the wounded also have been praised. Panel member Dr. Marcus Martin, an assistant dean at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, said during the May 10 meeting that "a wonderful job was done" by Western Virginia emergency responders to help shooting victims.

The panel will hold additional public meetings on June 11 in Northern Virginia and July 18 in Charlottesville.

Staff writer Greg Esposito contributed to this report.