News Update August 23, 2005

• 08/24/05

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SPONSOR
Announcing Campus Technology’s 2005 Innovators
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=17775

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News for Tuesday, August 23, 2005

* Group Promotes Open Source Global Campus VoIP Network
* Higher Education Planners Elects 2004-2006 Board of Directors
* Rural Universities Launch Clean Room, Miniaturization Centers
* Purdue to Build Cyber Infrastructure Center to Unite Resources
* Merit Completes First Phase of Facilities-Based Backbone?

ONLINE RESOURCES
http://www.campus-technology.com/resources/index.asp

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Sponsored by:
Announcing Campus Technology’s 2005 Innovators

The first annual Campus Technology Innovators awards are now online,
with 13 institutions singled out for their vision, leadership,
initiative, creativity, and successful campus/vendor partnerships.
This year’s outstanding programs are recognized for pushing the
technology envelope to achieve goals in both the academic and
administrative areas of campus. Read their stories for inspiration and
guidance at http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=17775.

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Group Promotes Open Source Global Campus VoIP Network

A group of open source software proponents is launching
an initiative to use Linux software to enable free calling
to and between universities and any computer on the Internet.

The initiative is called the Global University Phone System,
or GUPS, and is the brainchild of Michael Robertson, a
University of California-San Diego graduate and the founder
of MP3.com. He is currently the founder of Lindows Inc.,
which aims to develop affordable Linux-based software.
GUPS says its in beta testing at U.C. San Diego,
U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Irvine, the University of Oklahoma,
the University of Philippines and Brigham Young University (UT).

Elazar Harel, assistant vice chancellor of administrative
computing and telecommunications at UCSD, said the school
has routed more than 10,000 minutes since June. “The
implementation of this system was easy and the call quality
was great. We are investigating expanding VoIP offerings to
the campus community.”

The GUPS Initiative provides universities with a Voice-over-IP (VoIP)
system they can install and configure to connect their phone networks
with other academic institutions around the globe. Calls through GUPS
adhere to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) approved SIP
protocol, an open standard that ensures calls can be made between
participating campuses as well as between any software or hardware
telephony device that supports SIP.

For more information visit http://aboutreef.org/gups.

Higher Education Planners Elects 2004-2006 Board of Directors

The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP),
an organization representing 5,000 higher education planners,
named its 2005-2006 board of directors at its annual
international conference last month. Michael F. Middaugh,
assistant vice president for institutional research and
planning at the University of Delaware (Newark, Del.), is
president; Andrea A. Lex, senior director of student and
administrative services, University of Washington (Seattle, Wash.),
is president-elect; James L. Murdock, assistant dean of finance
and planning, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, is
secretary/treasurer; and L. Carole Wharton, a management
consultant at McManis-Monsalve Associates (Manassas, Va.),
is immediate past president.

Rural Universities Launch Clean Room, Miniaturization Centers

Two large rural universities are setting themselves up as
miniaturization technology centers to help train high tech
workers and stimulate their local economies. The University
of Alaska at Fairbanks and North Dakota State University have
licensed chip-scale packaging technology from Tessera Technologies
Inc. to provide assembly services for semiconductor devices,
including EEPROM, DRAM and flash memory chips. The devices are
used in defense, medical, wireless, and computing electronics
to meet next-generation miniaturization and performance
requirements.

At Alaska, the project is part of the development of an Office
of Electronics Miniaturization, which houses a clean room facility.
'EM is located in UAF's Natural Sciences Facility (NSF), a
123,000-square-foot complex of science laboratories and classrooms
that serve the UAF community and interior Alaska. In NDSU, the
micr'electronics facility will be used in part to fabricate
chip-scale packaged devices to be used in the Department of
Defense Chameleon program, which aims to develop wireless
surveillance sensors to provide a method of collecting more
accurate intelligence information.

Purdue to Build Cyber Infrastructure Center to Unite Resources

Purdue University will build a new “cyber infrastructure” center
to unite computer resources at all of its campuses in order to
enhance research and education and set the stage for more federal
funding, according to the university. The center is being funded
for the first three years with a portion of a $10 million Lilly
Endowment grant, which also is being used to create three other
new centers focusing on the environment, cancer research and
another area to be announced later in August.

"Purdue will combine its diverse and rich research environment
with a central information-technology system," said Ahmed
Elmagarmid, a professor of computer science who will be the
inaugural director of the center. "The center will give us an
edge when competing for funding because normally you only find
this type of resource at national laboratories. "It's like the
Internet on steroids."

One of the center's roles will be to develop scientific gateways,
or portals, such as the "nanoHUB," a system developed at Purdue
that currently enables about 5,000 researchers from around the
world to explore nanotechnology for research and education.
The nanoHUB is a computer grid that delivers advanced
nanotechnology simulations to users ranging from high school
students to professional scientists and engineers. The system
is operated as part of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology,
funded by the National Science Foundation.

Merit Network Completes First Phase of Facilities-Based Backbone

Merit Network, Inc. has completed its move to a new optical network
for its southern Michigan backbone. The new connections use dark
fiber from Michigan Lambda (MiLR), a collaborative effort of
Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Wayne
State University (MI). The universities contracted with Merit
to deploy advanced optical electronics and to manage day-to-day
engineering and operations of the MiLR network. Merit is a non-profit
run by Michigan's public universities to supports the high-performance
networking needs of Michigan's universities and schools.

The fiber connections consist of more than 750 miles of fiber-optic
cabling, including routes between Detroit and Chicago, as well as
metro rings within both cities. The network connects Merit members
with direct peering connections to national and international
research and education networks such as National LambdaRail,
Internet2/Abilene, CANARIE (Canadian Network for the Advancement
of Research, Industry and Education) and MREN.

"This move will provide Merit tremendous growth in bandwidth,
quadrupling current capacity (from 2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps), while
containing future costs and establishing Merit in the field of
regional optical networking,” said Mike McPherson, Merit Network
interim president and CEO. “Utilizing a facilities-based backbone
provides Merit with complete engineering control in support of new
initiatives and research activities critical to the future success
of our members and affiliates."

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Online Resources

Microsite: ERP Systems for the Campus Enterprise
Sponsored by Campus Management
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=17806

Microsite: Building Campus Communities through Collaboration
Sponsored by Dell
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=17807

Microsite: Creating the Classroom of Tomorrow
Sponsored by Hewlett Packard
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=17809

White Paper: Mapping Information Technology Strategies to Answer Today’s Agenda
Sponsored by Campus Management
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=17810

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