New Orleans, Louisiana.    During today’s annual meeting of the National 
Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) the University of 
Southern California (USC) announced that it has joined the Kuali Foundation 
(http://kuali.org) as an investing partner in the development of community source 
administrative systems for higher education.

Dennis Dougherty, Senior Vice President, Finance, and Chief Financial Officer, 
spearheaded USC’s effort to join Kuali.  He summarized his commitment to the 
community source model for development of administrative applications when he stated, 

“The paradigm that offers the greatest potential for success entails the pooling of 
efforts by the higher education community to leverage the best of modern 
technology, applied specifically to the business needs of our institutions.  The 
traditional approaches in which each institution either develops its own systems or 
purchases expensive commercial products intended primarily for other markets, 
do not offer the best combination of cost effectiveness, rapidity of development, 
and focus on the needs of the higher education market.  The model encapsulated 
in the Kuali Foundation’s community source projects does.”

"USC is an excellent addition to the Kuali Community” notes Brad Wheeler, Vice 
President of IT and CIO at Indiana University and Kuali Board chair.  “They are well 
aligned with the Kuali vision of software of, for, and by higher ed with support from a 
competitive commercial market.  As a large private university, they join other investors 
to demonstrate that building together and control of destiny are a great value for higher 
ed."

Based on the proven design of the Indiana University financial information system, the 
Kuali Financial System (KFS) is the community source enterprise financial application 
being developed by staff from Cornell University, Indiana University, Michigan State 
University, San Joaquin Delta College, The University of Arizona, The University of 
Hawaii, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, The University of California Office of 
the President, and rSmart.  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.  Version 1 was released in October 2006, and Version 2 
is scheduled for release in October 2007.

“The vision of the USC colleagues with whom we have worked is truly impressive, from 
the Senior Vice President to the technical and functional people who will be actively to demonstrate that building tog
involved in the initiative” says Barry Walsh, Associate Vice President for Enterprise 
Software at Indiana University and Kuali Foundation Executive Director.    

Rob Johnson, Associate Senior Vice President, Financial and Business Services, who will 
represent USC on the Kuali Financial System Board, added, “The Kuali development 
approach, in which functionality and priorities are determined by the business leaders 
rather than technical experts, is one of the primary reasons USC elected to join the 
Foundation.  The community source development process means that we will benefit 
from both the management and technical expertise of our partner institutions.”  

During the week of 23 July, USC hosted a Kuali Developer “boot camp” for 28 software 
developers.  Attendees, most from USC, learned to develop for the Kuali framework and 
processes. “The Kuali development approach and framework is useful for local 
development even beyond the Kuali Projects,” noted Ken Wozniak, Assistant Vice 
President for Administrative Information Services at USC.

The Kuali Foundation (http://kuali.org), incorporated in May 2006 as a not-for-profit 
organization, promotes, supports and develops administrative software and practices 
designed to meet the needs of higher education.  USC joins the original KFS investors 
and the University of California Office of the President, UC-Davis, Irvine, and Santa 
Barbara campuses that added $1M of functional and development resources in 2006. 

In addition to KFS, the foundation is also coordinating the development of Kuali 
Research Administration, Endowment Management, and other administrative software.             

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Rob Johnson 
Associate Senior Vice President, Financial and Business Services 
University of Southern California 
rjohnson@usc.edu

John F. (Barry) Walsh 
Associate Vice President for Enterprise Software 
Executive Director of the Kuali Foundation 
812.855.6416       
walsh@indiana.edu