July 8, 2006; Honolulu, Hawaii.    At the Campus of the Future conference (co-sponsored 
by APPA, NACUBO and SCUP), the University of California (UC) today announced that 
it has joined the Kuali Foundation as an investing partner in the development of the 
community source Kuali Financial System (KFS).  Three UC campuses, UC Davis, UC 
Irvine, UC Santa Barbara and the Office of the President are investing resources as part 
of this partnership.  “The Kuali community is delighted with UC’s considerable  
investment expertise in steering our collective software future”, said Dr. Brad Wheeler, 
CIO at Indiana University and Chair of the Kuali Foundation Board of Directors.

Based on the proven design of the Indiana University financial information system,  KFS 
is the community source enterprise financial system being developed by staff from 
Cornell University, Indiana University, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta 
College, The rSmart Group, The University of Arizona, and The University of Hawaii, 
with guidance from NACUBO.  The initiative had previously been seeded by a generous 
grant of $2,500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Built on open standards 
and featuring a robust enterprise workflow engine that enables effective institutional 
business processes, KFS is designed to meet the needs of any Carnegie Class institution, 
regardless of size or complexity.

“The addition of the University of California Office of the President and the three 
campuses greatly strengthens the Kuali Financial System partnership going forward” said 
Joanne DeStefano, VP Financial Affairs & University Controller at Cornell University.

J Michael Allred, Associate Vice Chancellor, Finance/Controller, UC Davis, who will 
represent his UC colleagues as the Kuali Board representative, said that the Kuali 
Financial System represents an opportunity to leverage UC Davis’ significant investment 
in an earlier version of the system and offers a path to delivering new financial system 
capabilities to the campus. Kristine Hafner, Associate Vice President, Information 
Resources and Communications, UC Office of the President, noted that the University of 
California campuses have a strong interest in collaborating to gain greater efficiencies 
and that by joining Kuali, UC strengthens its commitment to community source 
development as a means to address critical business and administrative needs.  

Barry Walsh, Senior Director of e-Business Services at Indiana University, and Executive 
Director of the KFS initiative welcomed the opportunity to continue working with 
colleagues from UC.  “I’ve known Mike (Allred), Kris and many of the key UC players 
for some time and felt that they would make really valuable partners going forward.  It 
made it very easy to recommend joining with our UC colleagues when the issue was first 
broached to the Kuali Board”.  

"NACUBO members continue to search out the information technology solutions that 
provide the best fit for their campuses, including a community developed solution like the 
Kuali Financial System," explains Sue Menditto, Director, Accounting Policy, National 
Association of College and University Business Officers.  "The knowledge brought by 
the University of California to the KFS partners will further enhance the development of 
this unique project."

The Kuali Foundation (http://kuali.org), incorporated in May 2006 as a not-for-profit 
organization, promotes, supports and develops software and practices designed to meet 
the needs of higher education.  In addition to KFS, the foundation is also actively 
pursuing the development of research administration, endowment management and other 
administrative software.

NACUBO:  http://www.nacubo.org/ 
Bradley Wheeler: bwheeler@indiana.edu 
Joanne DeStefano:  jmd11@cornell.edu 
J Michael Allred: jmallred@ucdavis.edu 
Kristine Hafner: Kristine.Hafner@ucop.edu 
David Lyons: djlyons@msn.com 
Barry Walsh: walsh@indiana.edu 
Sue Menditto: Susan.Menditto@nacubo.org 
Tom Chapman:  tom.chapman@rsmart.com