Biography
Aaron Godert is the Manager of Enterprise Integration for Cornell University in the central IT organization's Information Systems division. In this capacity, he leads a team of developers with responsibility for establishing, implementing, and maintaining consistent practices for systematic sharing of services and data between the large-scale University enterprise software systems. This includes Cornell's implementation of Kuali Rice for process workflow, notification, and accompanying application development.
Prior to his current position, Aaron served as the Senior Software Architect and Engineer within the Advanced Technology and Architectures group at Cornell. Additionally, he served as the Software Development Manager for the University's Financial division, and before coming to Cornell in 2002, Aaron worked in private industry for HSBC Bank USA and Algonquin Studios as a software developer.
Aaron has been involved in various collaborative efforts outside of Cornell. In this context, he:
- Currently serves as the Vice Chair for the Jasig Board of Directors and is the board liaison to the Infrastructure and Services Team
- Currently serves as a Director on the Kuali Rice Project Board
- Was the Co-Chair of the Jasig Spring 2008 Conference
- Was a development manager for the Kuali Finance System and Kuali Rice projects, helping to spearhead early on technical leadership for both efforts
- Has been a frequent presenter at various conferences (e.g. EDUCAUSE, Jasig, Kuali Days, etc)
Aaron received his Master of Engineering degree in Computer Science with a concentration in management, from Cornell University in 2005 and his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Canisius College in 2002. Currently, he is a student in the Cornell University-Queen's University Executive MBA program.
Platform Statement
My involvement with open source software in higher-education began in late 2004 when I became involved in the development of the Kuali Finance System, which at that time, was the first and only product of the newly formed Kuali Foundation. While I approached the collaboration with skepticism, I soon realized the benefits of shared knowledge, practices, and pooled resources. I attended my first Jasig conference in June of 2006 and joined the Jasig board later that same year. Since that time, it has been a pleasure serving the community in this context and to see Jasig come to fruition - growing from a grant-funded organization to a self-sustaining one.
Looking forward, it will be crucial to sustain the new level of existence that Jasig has matured into. In order to do so, my focus will be to work with the Jasig Board on the following strategic areas:
- Growth in membership commitments
- Growth in Jasig projects by promoting the newly established incubation process
- Continuing to establish our identity as a sponsor and incubator of quality open source software and gain exposure among leadership within organizations
- Continuing to provide a high-quality conference for showcasing software development efforts in Higher-Ed
- Evolving Jasig's Infrastructure and Services by consolidating services and looking to the Cloud for opportunities to do so
- Working to ensure resource availability and functional steering of our established cornerstone products (e.g. uPortal and CAS)
- Continuing to enhance our relationships with other open source communities such as Kuali, Sakai, DuraSpace, etc
My leadership experiences at Cornell and also within both the Jasig and Kuali communities provide me an opportunity to help set the strategic direction of Jasig. I look forward to continuing my work as a board member and serving the greater Jasig community.