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Open Source Portal Project Honored as Catalyst
7/24/2007
The uPortal project to develop a free, sharable Web portal for higher education won the 2007 Catalyst award, given by the Educause association for innovation and excellence in campus IT.The project grew out of the desire of a group of colleges and universities in the late 1990s to develop flexible software to meet their common needs. The group, called the Java Architectures Special Interest Group (JA-SIG), made uPortal one of its first initiatives.
Jim Helwig, the project manager of the uPortal project at the University of Wisconsin at Madison's Department of Information Technology, said the project represented the cooperative spirit of higher education.
"It is great to be a part of this," he said. "This is a great example of higher education institutions working well together and accomplishing a lot.... We should feel proud."
Jonathan Markow, chairman of JA-SIG, said the award "is particularly meaningful because it reflects the robust health and size of our community, as well as the maturity of the uPortal platform."
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Paul McCloskey is a contributing editor for the Campus Technology group of publications.
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