EDUCAUSE Honors Two Transformative Communities

For Release:
September 9, 2009

Contact:
Julie K. Little
Senior Director, Teaching, Learning,
and Professional Development
EDUCAUSE
jlittle@educause.edu
865-250-9450

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, announced the winners of its 2009 Leadership and Catalyst Awards. Through these annual awards, EDUCAUSE recognizes outstanding leaders, innovations, and initiatives in higher education IT. Recipients of the 2009 awards will be honored before more than 6,000 colleagues at the association's annual conference, scheduled for November 3-6 in Denver, Colorado.

Learn more about the EDUCAUSE Awards Program, and watch for updates about annual conference sessions on these achievements.

THE 2009 EDUCAUSE LEADERSHIP AWARD: SEMINARS ON ACADEMIC COMPUTING

For the first time, EDUCAUSE has granted its highest honor, the Leadership Award, to a collective winner—the Seminars on Academic Computing (SAC)—-for mentoring and cultivating a generation of leaders across the IT profession.

Initiated in 1969 by Bob Gillespie (University of Washington), Rex Krueger (University of Colorado), and the late Clair Maple (Iowa State University), SAC established itself as the place for those involved in academic computing to meet and discuss common issues across all aspects of IT leadership and management. Held annually through 2007, this event fostered dialogue and knowledge sharing among a wide range of higher education IT professionals, helping to develop a community of practitioners that continues to advance IT in higher education. Learn more.

THE 2009 EDUCAUSE CATALYST AWARD: FEDERATED IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

The EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award highlights IT-based innovations and initiatives that provide groundbreaking solutions to major challenges in higher education or change prevailing conditions in remarkable ways. In 2009, EDUCAUSE recognizes federated identity management with this award.

"Federated" identity describes the technologies, standards, and use cases that enable the portability of identity information across otherwise autonomous security domains (such as colleges and universities). The ultimate goal of identity federation is to enable users at one institution to securely and seamlessly access data or systems at another, without the need for completely redundant user administration. These services allow staff, students, and researchers to access online resources to which they are entitled, such as research data, virtual environments, institutional repositories, online grant applications, and other resources, regardless of location.

Although many relevant entities exist, the field as a whole acknowledges the InCommon Federation and the Internet2 Middleware Initiative in the United States; JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee in the United Kingdom; and the SWITCH Federation in Switzerland, as exemplars of the many organizations managing federated identity systems worldwide. Learn more.

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association and the foremost community of IT leaders and professionals committed to advancing higher education. EDUCAUSE programs and services are focused on analysis, advocacy, community building, professional development, and knowledge creation because IT plays a transformative role in higher education. EDUCAUSE supports those who lead, manage, and use information technology through a comprehensive range of resources and activities. For more information, visit www.educause.edu.