Power of SUNY

UCincinnati & SUNY Launch UCosmic Consortium

SUNY and the University of Cincinnati (UC) announced in January 2011 an agreement to form a global institutional consortium to bring an open source version of UCosmic® to institutions worldwide. The College Board and three universities have endorsed and joined the effort prior to the launch announcement.
 
UCosmic, originally developed at the University of Cincinnati, provides a means to comprehensively map global activities taking place across the university enterprise. Co-developers Mitch Leventhal and Dan Ludwig will continue to lead UCosmic development. Under the terms of the agreement, SUNY will take over management of the UCosmic Consortium, with Leventhal – now Vice Chancellor for Global Affairs at SUNY – serving also as Executive Director. Dan Ludwig, who at UC led technical development of the prototype, will serve as Chief Technical Officer on a full-time basis. UCosmic business operations will be based at the SUNY Global Center in midtown Manhattan.
 
The UCosmic Consortium will convert the system’s code to an open-source model, so that institutions anywhere can adopt the technology at minimal cost. The Consortium will provide member institutions with a platform to develop data standards needed for strategic planning, as well as a network for developers to share code and accelerate development of compliant modules. The Consortium will test new code created by the UCosmic development community and maintain open-source libraries. It will also sponsor annual conferences and various social networking resources designed to accelerate development and deployment.
 
The UCosmic Consortium was initiated as a result of inquiries and discussions with scores of universities within the United States and abroad.