Print Friendly Version Kuali Foundation Newsletter June 2008
- From the Executive Director
- Kuali Days VI
- Four New Investing partners in Kuali
- Indiana University wins NACUBO’s 2008 Innovation Award
- Kuali Coeus 1.0 prepared for release on July 1, 2008
- San Joaquin Delta College and rSmart co-develop a timesheet data entry system using Kuali Rice
- Sustainability of the Kuali Community
- Kuali Job Openings for Configuration Manager and Kuali Endowment Module Development Manager
- Upcoming Events
- Unsubscribe from this Newsletter
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1. From the Executive Director
Greetings to the Kuali Community:This Newsletter is intended to begin a series of Kuali Foundation Newsletters that will come to you on a regular basis. Because this is our inaugural issue, we may be reaching some of you who prefer not to receive this. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this list, please send me an e-mail at jfoutty@kuali.org and I’ll remove you from the list.
These Newsletters initially will be issued quarterly, although we may update you between quarterly issues.
As the new Executive Director, appointed in March 2008, I would like to say how happy I am to be joining such a vibrant community. We now have 23 members in higher education and 7 commercial affiliates. We continue to grow, as new members join the Foundation and as new investing partners come on board. Recently, we have seen current investing partners expand their investment into new applications areas. The University of California Davis, the University of Maryland, and the University of Southern California all have recently expanded their investments beyond their initial application project to other projects.
Our Kuali Days VI in Chicago was a great success. It was the first multi-track conference for the Kuali Foundation. We solicited feedback on our new format, and we will continue to evolve the Kuali Days. Kuali Days VII will be held in November in Southern California – more details should be forthcoming within a couple of weeks.
Summer is not a down time for the Kuali Teams! The first module of the Kuali Coeus project will be delivered on July 1, 2008! Release 3.0 of KFS is planned to go into Quality Assurance (QA) in September.
As the Kuali Foundation grows, we find the need to further coordinate resources. Later in this newsletter, you’ll see a job posting for a Configuration Manager. This is a Kuali Foundation position to support all projects.
I hope you find these Kuali Newsletters useful. I will try to keep them fairly succinct and impart the key issues that are most important to our community and its constituents.Best regards,
Jennifer Foutty
Executive Director, Kuali Foundation
jfoutty@kuali.org
812-345-3948
www.kuali.org
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2. Kuali Days VI
Kuali Days VI was held May 13-14, 2008 in Itasca, Illinois. This was the Kuali Foundation’s first full, multi-track conference. It included tracks for financial systems, research administration systems, student systems, and the Rice 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."
Feedback from the conference has been positive. Several attendees did comment that it was difficult to choose which session to attend given so many terrific sessions were being offered concurrently.
The attendees had a lot of fun too, and we will be translating that fun to beautiful Southern California for Kuali Days VII in November 2008. -----------------------------------------------------------------
3. Four New Investing Partners in Kuali
The Kuali Foundation has announced the addition of four 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. 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 Indiana University Foundation has become an investing partner in the KFS system, with specific resources applied to lead the Kuali Endowment Management module.
The announcement was made at the sixth Kuali Days conference. "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."
We welcome these partners to these projects!
For other universities who wish to become partners in one or more of the projects, please contact Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, at jfoutty@kuali.org. There are opportunities now for schools to become partners and to have influence in the future direction of these projects.-----------------------------------------------------------------
4. Indiana University wins NACUBO’s 2008 Innovation Award
The National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) announced on June 3, 2008 that Indiana University is the recipient of the association’s 2008 Innovation Award, which recognizes process improvement and resource enhancement, for the KUALI Financial System (KFS). The KFS project is working to create a comprehensive suite of financial software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. With two major functionality releases completed and a third just around the corner, KFS demonstrates that higher-education-specific software can be developed through the successful collaboration of a community of institutions.
“With the KUALI Financial System, Indiana University exemplifies how colleges and universities are working diligently to operate efficiently and to save money,” notes John Walda, president and CEO of NACUBO.-----------------------------------------------------------------
5. Kuali Coeus 1.0 prepared for release on July 1, 2008
The Kuali Research Administration (KRA) product is an evolution of the current Coeus system. To ensure we are communicating that there is a converging roadmap between the current Coeus product and the Kuali product, and to recognize the code base upon which the community is built, the Kuali team agreed that we want to recognize this by combining the product names, and requested the product name be “Kuali Coeus.”
The first release of the Kuali Coeus 1.0 for research administration is scheduled for July 1, 2008. This module includes proposal and budget development along with the ability to submit proposals to grants.gov. Kuali Coeus builds on the models used successfully by Sakai and Kuali Financial Systems where the system is based on a proven design. In this case, Kuali Coeus is based on an update of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s proven Coeus system, one of the first cradle-to-grave award management systems in the nation. The partners developing this system are: Colorado State University, Cornell University and the Weill College of Medicine, Indiana University, MIT, Michigan State University, University of California Davis, University of Arizona, and the Coeus Consortium. Future modules include Awards, IRB and Conflict of Interest. There is still time for new investing partners to join in the development of this project!
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6. San Joaquin Delta College and rSmart co-develop a timesheet data entry system using Kuali Rice
At a session at Kuali Days VI, San Joaquin Delta College and rSmart presented a project recently developed using Kuali Rice. This system allows end user to enter their time sheet data online, and uses Kuali Enterprise Workflow (KEW) to gain the appropriate approvals online. This project was undertaken after Delta looked at their current manual time sheet processing system and saw how Rice and KEW could be used to quickly and effectively create an application to automate these processes. Using the KIS (Keep it Simple!) approach, rSmart worked with Delta to come up with a business process design that used real-time integration to some legacy systems, so that users could effectively create electronic timesheets and route them for approval.
Following the community source model, Delta and rSmart will be contributing this code back to the Kuali community.
For many institutions who want to start exploring the Kuali at their institution, they could follow this lead and identify an under-served business process, and use Rice and KEW to address it. This will help Kuali champions on campus build more support from other campus stakeholders and demonstrate the value of Kuali and the community source model.
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7. Sustainability of the Kuali Community
As we near the release of version 3.0 of Kuali Financial Systems, and the release of version 1.0 of the Kuali Coeus system, many of the partner schools are in the process of implementation planning. Therefore, the keynote address on the second day of the Kuali Days VI conference, given by Dr. Bradley C. Wheeler, Vice President for IT & CIO, Dean, & Professor at Indiana University, was entitled “Sustaining Our Third Era of Software.” Dr. Wheeler talked about the 3 eras of software development in higher education: build, buy, and community source. In this third era of community source, there is no credible game of pretending to contract away the work towards monopolization. In this era, institutions learn new behaviors that save money and improve lifecycle systems value through our own behavior. Higher education has all the resources it needs among software consuming and software producing institutions to thrive in the third era.
Look for more to come on sustainability in future Newsletters.
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8. Kuali job Openings for Configuration Manager and Kuali Endowment Module Development Manager
CONFIGURATION MANAGER:
The Kuali Foundation seeks an experienced professional to be the Kuali Configuration Manager.
The Kuali Configuration Manager plays a key role in the overall success of the Kuali Community Source consortium. The Kuali suite of applications under development includes Kuali Financial System; Kuali Coeus; Kuali Student; and Kuali Rice. The Kuali Configuration Manager will provide leadership in the definition, standardization and evolution of configuration management tools and processes for all Kuali applications (with the guidance and approval of the Kuali Technical Council). The Kuali Configuration Manager acts in a supporting and facilitating role for all Kuali projects through the management of the server environments; the management of productivity, development and collaboration tools; and by ensuring a critical level of up-time in a highly distributed project environment.
The current configuration of seven application servers and three database servers in the Kuali hosting environment run a myriad of software tools. Kuali is currently leveraging Oracle 10G and MySQL v5.045 for the Kuali applications under development and for all productivity and collaboration tools used by the Kuali community. Each of the four primary Kuali applications essentially use one dedicated application server; the remaining three application servers run the productivity and collaboration tools. All servers are virtual servers running under VMWare using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (both 32-bit and 64-bit).
The Kuali Configuration Manager's primary responsibilities include installing/maintaining/upgrading/documenting the server's software environments including tools such as JIRA, Confluence, Bamboo, Crowd, Java Profilers, Anthill Pro, CVS, Subversion, Fisheye, Sakai, the Kuali Directory, and enabling technology for various Kuali websites. The Kuali Configuration Manager will set the blueprint for all application Configuration Managers to follow. The Kuali Configuration Manager will need to collaborate effectively and work closely with the individual application Configuration Managers on a day-to-day basis. The Kuali Configuration manager is the primary person to work with the Systems Administration and DBA groups when new services or service upgrades are required and for problems affecting the availability of services. The Kuali Configuration Manager must understand the environments and technologies leveraged by the various Kuali Applications in order to help troubleshoot and diagnose system and Kuali application-related issues. Proficiency in Linux, Apache, Tomcat, various DBMS technologies, Java, Eclipse IDE, Ant, Maven, CVS, Subversion, and shell scripting strongly desired. 3-5 years experience with mission critical applications management experience required. Excellent communication and organizational skills and the ability to work with multiple teams are required.
Depending on the circumstances of the successful applicant, this position could be established in a number of ways, including:
- an agreement to second the employee to the Kuali Foundation, if the candidate wishes to remain with his or her institution
- as a personal consultancy directly to the Kuali Foundation
- other arrangements will be considered
Please send cover letter and resume via e-mail to:
Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, Kuali Foundation Inc.
jfoutty@kuali.org
KUALI ENDOWMENT MODULE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
The Kuali Financial Systems (KFS) team is seeking a motivated professional to manage systems analysis and programming personnel for the Kuali Endowment System. Works with partner institutions overseeing the development project for building the endowment management system for the community source KFS. Plans, organizes, schedules, and manages the work of two to four programmers.
Participates in the development of long-range plans for systems development and manages the creation of enterprise web applications; conducts research, evaluates alternatives, and proposes solutions. Provides technical leadership, expertise, mentoring, and supervision of activities needed for systems analysis, design, and programming as related to system development and maintenance. Serves as liaison with subject-matter expert teams and heads special technical assignment groups when necessary. Establishes priorities for tasks to ensure timely development and implementation of projects. Plans, organizes, assigns, and supervises the work activities of analyst/programmers. Conducts formal performance evaluations of staff on a periodic basis. Plans and assists in the education, training, and technical development of analyst/programmers.
Prepares a variety of reports and analyses supporting short- and long-range objectives. Provides time and cost estimates and documentation for these proposals. Responsible for team’s compliance to Kuali Software policies, procedures, and standards. Serves on various committees and represents the institution at local and national professional organizations as assigned.
Qualifications: Bachelor's degree and four years of enterprise software experience, including at least two years of systems development experience. A solid understanding of sound management principles and practices, including previous supervisory experience required. Enterprise scale applications development experience engineering J2EE Web applications preferred. Experience with and knowledge of the Tomcat Servlet container and J2EE development tools and frameworks including Eclipse, JSP, Struts, XML, Spring, and CVS is preferred. Excellent interpersonal skills essential for interaction with diverse customer constituencies. Proven experience building cohesive teams, motivating technical staff, recruiting and training skilled developers, and delivering/supporting quality enterprise applications is essential.
Please send cover letter and resume via e-mail to:
Jennifer Foutty, Executive Director, Kuali Foundation Inc.
jfoutty@kuali.org
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9. Upcoming Events
EUNIS 2008 European University Information Systems Organisation
June 24-27, 2008
Århus, Denmark
http://eunis.dk/
9th Sakai Conference
Université Pierre et Marie Curie
July 1 - 3, 2008
Paris, France
https://sakai.educonference.com/paris/index.php
NACUBO Annual Meeting
Chicago, Illinois
July 12-15, 2008
http://www.nacuboannualmeeting.org/nacubo2008/public/enter.aspx
Kuali Days VII
November 18-19, 2008
Location: Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa
http://www.kuali.org
EDUCAUSE 2008
Orlando, Florida
October 28–31, 2008
http://net.educause.edu/e08
ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2008
14th International Conference on Technology Supported Learning and Training
December 3 - 5 , 2008
Hotel InterContinental Berlin
Berlin, Germany
www.online-educa.com
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10. Unsubscribe from this Newsletter
If you would like to unsubscribe from this newsletter, please send a message to Jennifer Foutty at jfoutty@kuali.org and ask to be unsubscribed from the Kuali Newsletter listserv.