SINCLAIR COMMUNITY COLLEGE WINS ACUTA’S
2006 INSTITUTIONAL EXCELLENCE AWARD

SAN DIEGO, California, July 26, 2006 – Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, has won this year’s Institutional Excellence in Communications Technology Award, presented by ACUTA, the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, during its annual conference here this week.

The Institutional Excellence in Communications Technology Award, now in its 14th year, is determined by a peer review committee. This year’s top honor went to Sinclair Community College for its Secure Local Area Network Strategy project. The 24,000-student institution developed the strategy in response to significant growth in both wired and wireless networking. It consisted of five phases: development of an acceptable use policy, management system configuration, dynamic intrusion response, authentication of imaged devices, and authentication of non-imaged devices.

Sinclair’s solution gives access to campus resources based on the role of the user, the configuration of their computing device, and verifiability that the device is problem-free. The college was also able to develop innovative partnerships with vendors to reduce its costs for the project.

“Projects such as Sinclair Community College’s Secure LAN Strategy initiative demonstrate the tremendous innovation we are seeing on ACUTA member campuses all over North America,” said Jeri Semer, executive director of ACUTA. “This is why the information sharing integral to ACUTA is so important to all our members.”

Earning Institutional Excellence honorable mentions were Wake Forest University in North Carolina and the Naval Postgraduate School in California. Wake Forest implemented Mobile U, a pilot project designed to enhance campus communications by providing highly mobile data access via pocket PC phones. The Naval Postgraduate School implemented Monterey Peninsula Department of Defense Net, a regional fiber-optic telecommunications transport system created in cooperation with the City of Monterey, California.

The Institutional Excellence in Communications Technology Awards are sponsored by PAETEC Communications, Inc.

About ACUTA
ACUTA, the Association for  Communications Technology  Professionals in Higher Education, is an international non-profit educational association serving colleges and universities.  Its core purpose is to support higher education communications technology professionals in contributing to the achievement of the strategic mission of their institutions. ACUTA represents nearly 2000 individuals at 825 institutions of higher education, with members ranging from small schools and community colleges to the 50 largest U.S. institutions.  ACUTA’s Corporate Affiliate members represent all categories of  communications technology  vendors serving the college/university market. For more information, visit www. acuta.org or call 859-278-3338.