Kuali Foundation announces new investing partners
ITASCA, Ill -- The Kuali Foundation has announced the addition of three new investing partners in the Kuali community. The University of Southern California has become a major new investing partner in the Kuali Student System, and has announced a commitment of $5M to the project. The University of Maryland College Park has become an investing partner in the Kuali Financial Systems. UMCP was already a partner in the Kuali Student System. Finally, the University of California, Davis is the newest investing partner in the Kuali Research Administration Systems. UC Davis has been an investing partner in the Kuali Financial Systems since July 2006.
The announcement was made at the sixth Kuali Days conference held at the Westin Chicago Northwest May 13-14, 2008.
"We believe that joining in the development of Kuali Student is a wise and creative long term investment," said Jerome A. Lucido, Vice Provost for Enrollment Policy and Management at the University of Southern California. "We have outstanding partners, the opportunity to shape the future of student systems, and we retain the people who develop and implement the system. Each is a unique benefit of the Kuali model."
Julie K. Phelps, Assistant Vice President for Administrative Affairs at University of Maryland College Park stated, "The University of Maryland, College Park is pleased to be joining a community of outstanding universities to share the risks and rewards of developing our next generation of financial system software. We are confident that the collaborative effort made possible by the Kuali Foundation partnership will result in an economical, effective, and predictable effort to renew and replace our existing legacy systems."
"Kuali Research Administration will be a key asset in supporting the growth of UC Davis's extensive research programs," said Barry Klein, UC Davis Vice Chancellor for Research. "Ours is one of the fastest growing and largest research budgets in the nation, and we value the fact that, much like our research, Kuali is a collaboration of international colleagues with expertise in best practices specific to the needs of higher education."
Stan Nosek, UC Davis Vice Chancellor for Administration echoed Dr. Klein's remarks. "We view Kuali as one of our most significant investments. The collaborative nature of the Kuali approach reflects our vision of supporting the university with the best administrative tools to enhance efficiency, lower costs, and support collaboration in answering important questions."
USC, UMCP, and UC Davis join 20 other universities as investing partners in Kuali, whose open-source model enables them to influence the future of the organization and its projects
"The higher education community and like-minded commercial partners are leading in the third era of software by building, together, the systems we need," said Brad Wheeler, Kuali Foundation Board of Directors Chairman and Indiana University CIO. "Open source is the shortest path between an end user and a developer, and the Kuali community is self-coordinating this on a grand scale. This work is an essential tool to reign in the costs of administrative systems while ensuring greater fit to institutional missions."
The May conference was Kuali's first full, multi-track conference. It included tracks for financial systems, research administration systems, student systems, and Rice the technical infrastructure and middleware component of Kuali. More than 400 university and business representatives from 23 states and 7 countries attended the conference. Dennis Dougherty, University of Southern California Senior Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer was the keynote speaker. Speaking of the evolution of software development in the higher education community over the past three decades, and of his experiences at USC, Dougherty proclaimed, "This is the most important activity in higher education today."
About Kuali
The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for sustaining and evolving a comprehensive suite of administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. Kuali began in 2004 as a cooperative effort among seven partners funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Their vision was to develop an open-source, community-owned financial system. The successful development of the Kuali Financial System led to three additional pooled-investment projects, Kuali Research Administration, Kuali Student Systems and Rice Kuali Infrastructure. All Kuali projects are now coordinated by an independent, not-for-profit organization, Kuali Foundation Inc. The software developed by Kuali partners is available, without fee, for anyone to use or modify under the Educational Community License.
Kuali Financial System, Kuali Research Administration, Kuali Student Systems and Rice Kuali Infrastructure are registered trademarks of the Kuali Foundation, Inc.
