rSmart Engineer Selected as Inaugural Sakai Fellow

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 14, 2006--rSmart Senior Software Engineer John Ellis was awarded a Sakai Fellowship at the 5th Sakai Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, earlier this month. Ellis was one of eight engineers from an international pool of nominees chosen to receive this first annual appointment. The Sakai Fellows program seeks to foster community leadership and contribution through recognizing and supporting active contributors. The criterion for this award is based on technological skill, leadership, and commitment to the Sakai project.

Ellis currently serves as a senior software engineer for rSmart and is one of the leaders in Sakai's engineering ranks. Since 2003, he has worked on the OSP Initiative which was created to deliver an open source ePortfolio solution for education. In 2006 OSP is an important part of the Sakai CLE, providing ePortfolio features as well as important structural improvements like enhanced resource management, tool helpers, and a rich new portal which have been contributed to the Sakai code base through Ellis's work with OSP.

"John really deserves this. I've been working with John for almost 10 years and have been working with him closely since he began engaging in Sakai community work. John helped lead the decision to move OSP toward Sakai, and has since been an outspoken and committed member of both communities," said rSmart President and Sakai Foundation Board Member Chris Coppola. "I'm proud to work with him and very pleased that his peers in the Sakai community have recognized him in this way."

"All of us within the Sakai community are tremendously proud of the first class of Sakai Fellows for what they have helped us accomplish," said rSmart CTO Anthony Potts. "The Sakai Fellowship merely confirms what we have known all along -- that John is a tremendous asset to the community and someone with a very bright future ahead of him. He has represented us well, and we're honored have him as part of the rSmart team."

About The rSmart Group

The rSmart Group is the leading open source application software company serving the higher education market. rSmart packages, certifies, deploys, and supports a suite of enterprise financial and collaborative learning applications for colleges and universities. As an active member of open source projects like OSPI, Kuali, and Sakai, rSmart is able to provide its clients with software applications specifically designed to meet the unique needs of institutions of higher education. This collaborative approach allows rSmart to offer colleges and universities open source applications that break their dependence on traditional proprietary software vendors.

Please visit www.rsmart.com for more information.

About the Sakai Fellows Program

The Sakai Fellows program seeks to foster community leadership and contribution through recognizing and supporting active contributors. Contributors bring varied expertise to the community, including architecture, design and development of technology, best practices in teaching, learning, research and collaboration, and coordination of community functions. The purpose of the Sakai Foundation Fellows Program is to enable outstanding Sakai volunteer contributors to continue and extend their involvement in Sakai, by providing material resources to support their work. The Sakai Fellows program will recognize such contributions and support the efforts of the Fellows through a modest stipend. The contributions of the Fellows will be showcased across the boundaries of the current work/discussion group structures of Sakai, offering a way for the entire community to be introduced to areas of the project that they may not follow closely, and providing a view to the public of the peer leaders' endeavors within the Sakai community.

Five Fellows will be chosen annually for a two-year term, creating a program of 10 Fellows with overlapping terms. Fellows will be given a $5,000 stipend for the two-year period with the intention that the stipend be used in Sakai-related activities, e.g. travel, equipment and professional development.

Please visit www.sakaiproject.org for more information.