University of Southern California joins Kuali Foundation
New Orleans, Louisiana -- During today's annual meeting of the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) the University of Southern California (USC) announced that it has joined the Kuali Foundation (http://kuali.org) as an investing partner in the development of community source administrative systems for higher education.
Dennis Dougherty, Senior Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer, spearheaded USC's effort to join Kuali. He summarized his commitment to the community source model for development of administrative applications when he stated, "The paradigm that offers the greatest potential for success entails the pooling of efforts by the higher education community to leverage the best of modern technology, applied specifically to the business needs of our institutions. The traditional approaches in which each institution either develops its own systems or purchases expensive commercial products intended primarily for other markets, do not offer the best combination of cost effectiveness, rapidity of development, and focus on the needs of the higher education market. The model encapsulated in the Kuali Foundation's community source projects does."
"USC is an excellent addition to the Kuali Community" notes Brad Wheeler, Vice President of IT and CIO at Indiana University and Kuali Board chair. "They are well aligned with the Kuali vision of software of, for, and by higher ed with support from a competitive commercial market. As a large private university, they join other investors to demonstrate that building together and control of destiny are a great value for higher ed."
Based on the proven design of the Indiana University financial information system, the Kuali Financial System (KFS) is the community source enterprise financial application being developed by staff from Cornell University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta College, The University of Arizona, The University of Hawaii, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, The University of California Office of the President, and rSmart. The initiative had previously been seeded by a generous grant of $2,500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Built on open standards and featuring a robust enterprise workflow engine that enables effective institutional business processes, KFS is designed to meet the needs of any Carnegie Class institution, regardless of size or complexity. Version 1 was released in October 2006, and Version 2 is scheduled for release in October 2007.
"The vision of the USC colleagues with whom we have worked is truly impressive, from the Senior Vice President to the technical and functional people who will be actively involved in the initiative" says Barry Walsh, Associate Vice President for Enterprise Software at Indiana University and Kuali Foundation Executive Director.
Rob Johnson, Associate Senior Vice President, Financial and Business Services, who will represent USC on the Kuali Financial System Board, added, "The Kuali development approach, in which functionality and priorities are determined by the business leaders rather than technical experts, is one of the primary reasons USC elected to join the Foundation. The community source development process means that we will benefit from both the management and technical expertise of our partner institutions."
During the week of 23 July, USC hosted a Kuali Developer "boot camp" for 28 software developers. Attendees, most from USC, learned to develop for the Kuali framework and processes. "The Kuali development approach and framework is useful for local development even beyond the Kuali Projects," noted Ken Wozniak, Assistant Vice President for Administrative Information Services at USC.
The Kuali Foundation, incorporated in May 2006 as a not-for-profit organization, promotes, supports and develops administrative software and practices designed to meet the needs of higher education. USC joins the original KFS investors and the University of California Office of the President, UC-Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara campuses that added $1M of functional and development resources in 2006.
In addition to KFS, the foundation is also coordinating the development of Kuali Research Administration, Endowment Management, and other administrative software.
