The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is eliminating a grant program that financed a series of high-profile university software projects and is merging it into another program.
Mellon’s decade-old Research in Information Technology program, or RIT, helped bankroll a catalog of freely available software that includes Sakai, a course-management system used by Stanford University and the University of Michigan; Kuali, a financial-management program recently rolled out at Colorado State University; and Zotero, a program for managing research sources used by millions.
Now the foundation plans to eliminate the RIT program as a stand-alone entity. Mellon described the change as part of an effort to “consolidate resources” and concentrate on core program areas like the liberal arts, scholarly communications, and museums. RIT will merge into the Scholarly Communications program, which will manage its existing grants. Ira H. Fuchs, RIT’s founder, says his position has been eliminated, as has that of Christopher J. Mackie, RIT’s associate program officer.
[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education – Wired Campus]
