[CENIC]
 [Featured CENIC Star Performer]


Other Star Performers

Richard Weinberg, USC
John Avakian
Ed Johanson
Radhika Mysore, UCSD
Tom DeFanti, UCSD/Calit2
Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA
Rich Wolski, UCSB
Steve Vogt, UCSB
Shaya Fainman, UCSB
Tim Calhoon, CCC Tech Ctr.
Brian Shepard, USC
John Orcutt, UCSD/SIO
David Lassner, U Hawaii
Amin Vahdat, UCSD
Blaine Morrow, CCC Confer
Holger Schmidt, UCSC
Paul Wright, CITRIS
Lee Thompson, CSU EB
Ruzena Bajcsy, UCB
Laurin Herr, Pacific Interface
G. P. Li, Calit2@UCI
Lee Belarmino, SJ Delta Coll.
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, UCSB
Kevin Patrick, UCSD
Roger Bales, UCM
Liang Feng, Caltech
Peter Nugent, LBNL
Persis Drell, Stanford/SLAC
Jim Gaston
South Orange County Community College District 		[Jim Gaston Picture]
The South Orange County Community College District has created Sherpa, a recommendation engine for courses, information and services that utilizes both human and machine intelligence. Sherpa uses time, event or location-based "triggers" to deliver multimodal (email, SMS, voice, text-to-speech, or Facebook announcements) personalized communications such as helping students find acceptable alternatives when their preferred courses are full; targeting at-risk students for academic interventions; and tailoring information about campus events to individual interests.

Sherpa has been realized through the efforts of a substantial project team lead by Jim Gaston, the Associate Director of Information Technology for the SOCCC District, where he and his team have been awarded several state and national awards for technology innovation. Gaston has a passion for the intelligent use of technology to further the goals of higher education and enjoys using his sense of humor to convey this message. He presents regularly at local, regional and national conferences and has also been an Adjunct Professor at Irvine Valley College where he taught HTML and Internet courses.