I'm back home safe from the search and am finally caught up with the threads and checking in with not much information or insight to offer. The search seems to be well organized, they have divided the search area up into sections and sub sections, and send out groups each with a clearly defined area to search, and a group leader with a radio. If anything of potential interest is found they have you call it in on the radio, and give directions as to what to do.
I was team leader in our first group and was assigned a 2 block area just at the edge of campus and searched for about two hours, but found two wallets, and a broken cell phone, but nothing relevant to the case.
After that I went out in a second group, led by a search-and-rescue person from Ohio. We were assigned a more upscale residential area where we found nothing of interest.
After getting home I was watching the NBC national news, and one of the guys interviewed was a member of the team I lead.
I have heard rumors that some interesting items may have been found, but what I was hearing on the radio was things like <modsnip> or "We've lost three members of our search group"