Campus Briefs

98,000 SSNS?
Someone walked off with a notebook containing the social security numbers of thousands of applicants and both present and past students from UC Berkeley's enrollment records. The computer, taken from a restricted area of the Graduate Division offices in March, contained data from 1989 to the fall of 2004. By California law, the university must notify all 98,369 individuals of their compromised personal info.

FUNDING FOR FINANCIALS
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $2.5 million to the Kuali Project (www.kualiproject.org) for continued development of a new open source financial system for colleges and universities. The grant expands on Kuali's $7.2 million in aggregated resources of founding partners Indiana University, the University of Hawaii, the National Association of College and University Business Officers (www.nacubo.org), and the r-smart group (www.rsmart.com)-plus the investments of new institutional partners Cornell University (NY), San Joaquin Delta College (CA), Michigan State University, and the University of Arizona.

THAT'S CLASS (ACTION)
Five million dollars paid out by Microsoft in settlement of an antitrust class-action lawsuit brought against the tech giant by the state of Minnesota is being put to good use at the University of Minnesota. In March, the institution received $2.5 million in cash plus $2.5 million in product vouchers to be used by UMN's Institute of Technology. Combined with $5 million in matching funds from the university itself, the settlement money will help create a new Consortium for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB).

THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
A higher ed leadership program designed by eCornell (www.ecornell.com) and the Institute for Community College Development (www.iccd.cornell.edu ), a partnership between Cornell University (NY) and the State University of New York, will help organizations overcome resistance to change. The new, four-course certificate series, Proactive Leadership in Higher Education, launched at the end of April.

BETTER VIDEO
At The Ohio State University, clearer Internet video means selectively differentiating compression rates within an image. To resolve movement blur and choppiness, for instance, researchers are working on algorithms that track hand gestures and facial expressions, either for single or multiple speakers, and use a higher compression on everything else.

BUREAUCRACY BUSTERS
Administrators at the University of Alaska-Anchorage have posted Web forms encouraging campus constituents to report on ways to streamline, or even recommend doing away with "policies, processes, and procedures that make life at UAA unnecessarily difficult." A model to watch.

HOUSE CALLS
The IT doctor is in at Princeton University (NJ), and will treat the patient at your office-if you work on campus. The IT Office program (which sends out grad student IT consultants) is so popular that the department's itmatters newsletter announced the program will expand.

Brian Voss

Brian Voss leaves Indiana
for CIO post at Louisiana State.
NEW CIO FOR LSU
Brian Voss made the move to Louisiana State University last month, to become CIO and lead the Office of Computing Services. Voss leaves his role of Associate VP of Telecommunications at Indiana University.

EVER SMALLER
Florida International University is the latest to join the ever-larger ranks of the smallest business on earth. FIU's brand-new, $15 million Motorola Nanofabrication Research Facility will support a dozen researchers with a class-100 clean room (no more than 100 particles of dust or impurities larger than 0.5 microns, per cubic foot of air). Their work currently focuses on bio/nano electronics and communication.

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