EDUCAUSE Announces 2007 Awards in Higher Education Information Technology

The association honors a prominent leader, two exemplary writers, and a transformative IT project

This highest individual recognition offered by EDUCAUSE acknowledges and celebrates leaders whose work has had significant positive impact on the contributions of information technology to higher education.Recipients are selected by the EDUCAUSE Recognition Committee. The award is sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.

Gregory A. Jackson
for perceptive, frank analysis of complex issues and strong advocacy for IT in higher education
Vice President and CIO
University of Chicago

A respected advocate for higher education information technology for many years, Jackson has excelled in management posts at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago and achieved wide recognition as a communicator and volunteer of integrity, intelligence, and wit. He is now in his twelfth year as chief information officer at the University of Chicago. Before moving to Chicago in 1996, Jackson served as director of academic computing for MIT, where he was instrumental in the evolution of Project Athena. As a faculty member, he was one of the founding directors of Harvard’s Educational Technology Center, which studied the use of technology to advance educational practice. He also served as assistant director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard, a multidisciplinary research organization then operated by the two universities.

Jackson has been an influential participant on the boards of EDUCAUSE, National Lambda Rail (NLR), Internet2 (I2), and the Seminars on Academic Computing (SAC). He brought vision and momentum to early NLR-I2 merger efforts and was instrumental in creating the Research University CIO Conclave, a forum for research university CIOs. He was a member of the EDUCAUSE Recognition Committee, chaired the Internet2 National Planning and Policy Council, and is active in the Common Solutions Group and the Ivy+ and Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) CIO groups. Jackson has served on higher education advisory boards for Dell, Sun, Apple, Microsoft, and Gateway.

He has published and spoken extensively in the field, bringing clear understanding and often unconventional perspectives to complex issues. Articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education include “Open Source Is the Answer. What’s the Question?” and “A CIO’s Question: Will You Still Need Me When I’m 64?” In addition to several articles and two years as editor of the “Viewpoints” department in EDUCAUSE Review, he has been a consulting editor for the Journal of Higher Education and a member of the editorial board for the Harvard Educational Review. In June 2007, he gave invited testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology hearings on “The Role of Technology in Reducing Illegal Filesharing: A University Perspective.”

According to EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins, "Greg has been a significant and forward-thinking leader over the years. He has also actively participated in the community, energetically and effectively, and has been a thought-provoking contributor to many of our most important national discussions. He is highly deserving of this recognition, singling him out as a key figure in our community."

EDUCAUSE is making a $3,000 contribution in Dr. Jackson’s name to a scholarship or charity of his choice.

One of the fundamental means for sharing significant experiences and wisdom among colleagues is through publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This award encourages such effort by honoring unusually effective and well-reasoned articulation of professional experience that will benefit other institutions and individuals. Winners of this award are selected by the EDUCAUSE Quarterly Editorial Committee. The award is sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.

“Are You Ready for Mobile Learning?”
EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Volume 30, Number 2, 2007

Joseph Rene Corbeil
Assistant Professor, Educational Technology
The University of Texas at Brownsville
and Texas Southmost College

Maria Elena Valdes-Corbeil
Associate Professor, Bachelor of Applied Technology Program
The University of Texas at Brownsville
and Texas Southmost College

Frequent use of mobile devices does not mean that students or instructors are ready for mobile learning and teaching. Still, mobile technology now affects every aspect of the institution—academics, administration, research, technology infrastructure—and must be taken into account for realistic campus planning. This well-reasoned and well-documented article sheds technical and pedagogical light on the current mobile technology environment and provides an overview of technologies, directions, and considerations. The full text of the article is accessible from http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/AreYouReadyforMobile/40029.

This award recognizes innovations and initiatives centered on information technologies that provide groundbreaking solutions to major challenges in higher education, or change prevailing conditions in remarkable ways to allow new solutions to be deployed. Recipients are selected by the EDUCAUSE Recognition Committee. The award is sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.

2007 Recipient: uPortal Project

The uPortal project is an initiative to develop a free, sharable, constantly evolving, enterprise-wide Web portal specifically for higher education. It was one of the first attempts to apply open-source technologies in a collaborative development environment now referred to as “community source.” Its evolution is part of the ongoing dynamic between commercial and educational technology interests: The Internet and the Web originated largely in the higher education research community. In the 1980s and ‘90s, colleges and universities reveled in new opportunities for information access and customization, decentralization, and diversity of applications. Portals originally developed for e-commerce seemed to offer a much-needed framework for organizing these complex information structures in a coherent, integrated environment based on the user’s interests. 

Although interest in institutional portals was high, the complexity, cost, and technical and political challenges of linking diverse campus organizations and processes were formidable. In the late 1990s, a group of institutions joined together to develop flexible, functional software to meet the common needs of the higher education community, a group that evolved into the Java Architectures Special Interest Group (JA-SIG), with uPortal as one of its initiatives. Commercial partners were welcome from the start, and their expertise was leveraged in project management, software development, and marketing.

An open-standards effort using Java, XML, JSP, and J2EE, the uPortal project is arguably the most successful portal framework in higher education, with hundreds of active installations and over 650 commercial licenses sold. The uPortal code is freely available, and eight commercial partners as well as institutional members of the consortium participate in training, implementation, customization, and support services. This project has made at least two significant contributions within the higher education sector:

First, within its own functional space, uPortal has helped hundreds of institutions realize the benefits of portals for students, faculty, staff, and other constituents. Free and readily downloadable code allows many organizations—both within the United States and internationally—to experiment with portals in a low-risk environment. As the most widely implemented portal framework today, uPortal helped provide legitimacy to the approach before it became clear that portals represent the electronic equivalent of a “one-stop shop” that has led to many service improvements across our institutions.

Second, the uPortal project is an exemplar of community source in higher education, demonstrating that by working together in a structured, managed way, using open standards, and designing for generic flexible use, we can create applications tailored to higher education and make them available at a cost that lowers barriers to even the smaller institutions. It has been an inspiration for many important projects that are now maturing, including Sakai, OSP, Kuali, and others. This approach is increasingly recognized as a viable alternative for enterprise software across the institution. Open source is now reaching into the area of administrative information systems through Kuali, with a community-source student information system in planning stages. The collaborative process on which the uPortal project is based demonstrates in a unique way the value of joint efforts among departments to determine how to best serve the community.

With this award, we celebrate a product that has helped transform the way our users access information and transactions, a process that demonstrates how we can accomplish more by working together, and a philosophy of design that lifts the application out of its hard-coded, institution-specific form and into a more universal framework that can be customized by each institution while maintaining its generic integrity. EDUCAUSE President Brian Hawkins commented about this choice, "When the Catalyst Award first took shape, we saw it as an opportunity to recognize initiatives that were of, by, and for higher education—initiatives that really moved the ball forward. In my view, the uPortal project is a fine example of that vision, and I'm pleased that we're able to recognize it in this way."

Learn more about the EDUCAUSE Award Program.

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 250 corporations, with 17,000 active members. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu.