Apereo Foundation Names Awards for Founding Executive Director, Ian Dolphin

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The Apereo Foundation celebrated esteemed founding executive director emeritus Ian Dolphin at Open Apereo 2022 by naming the Apereo Awards in his honor.

Ian Dolphin, Executive Director Emeritus of Apereo FoundationThe new Apereo Foundation naming conventions recognize Dolphin’s years of service, dedication to open source values, commitment to higher education, and extraordinary leadership. The various Apereo awards have become the Apereo Dolphin Awards & Fellowships. The Foundation also created a new leadership award – The I.A.N.–highlighting a community member’s “Innovation” in evolving the Foundation, “Advocacy” for open source software in higher education, and “Networking” in building community. 

Ian Dolphin served Apereo Foundation as the founding Executive Director through the Sakai and Jasig software communities' merger in 2012. Dolphin led the community for nine years, growing the foundation’s network to include 300+ organizations over five continents, including memoranda of understanding with the LAMP consortium (USA) the ESUP-Portail consortium (France), and the AXIES consortium (Japan).

Prior to leading the Apereo Foundation, Dolphin was a Board member of Jasig, the Sakai Foundation, and the Curriki open content initiative. Dolphin served as Head of e-Strategy at The University of Hull and has broad experience in ICT governance, software, and infrastructure development in the UK and internationally.

The newly named Apereo Dolphin Awards & Fellowships program has become the umbrella term for awards formerly known to the community as Apereo Fellows, Apereo Teaching and Learning Awards (ATLAS), Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award (TWISA), and Open Source Software In Education award (OSSI-ED).

The new Apereo Dolphin Awards & Fellowships categories include:

  • Apereo Fellows: These awards recognize exceptional service and contributions by individuals to the Apereo open source community. From development to project management to other acts of service and support, Apereo Fellows make important contributions to the projects within the foundation.
  • Teaching and Learning: These awards recognize innovation in teaching and learning using open source software, promoting excellent pedagogy, sharing new practices in teaching, and encouraging more faculty involvement in software evolution.
  • Enterprise Solutions: This is a new award that seeks to recognize academic institutions, project teams, or others in the development, deployment, and/or implementation of open source software that supports the operation of higher education.
  • The I.A.N. Award (Innovator, Advocate, and Networker): This is a new, special honor to recognize an individual champion or leader, although this award can go to an organization as well. The recipient of this award promotes, propels, and transforms open source initiatives to meet the diverse and evolving needs of higher education.

The Apereo Foundation bestowed the first Dolphin Awards & Fellowships at Open Apereo 2022. 

The Apereo Dolphin Awards & Fellowships would not be possible without the time, effort, and passion of Apereo community members. We want to thank Anthony Whyte for his many years of service to the Apereo Fellows program and prior Apereo and Sakai Fellows for their Apereo Fellows committee service. We want to thank the many members of the Apereo Teaching and Learning Committee for their dedication to evaluating Apereo Teaching and Learning Awards (ATLAS) applications and promoting teaching and learning success throughout our member institutions, with special recognition to ATLAS Leadership over the years.