October 30, 2001
NCHELP partners with PTI to develop Meteor software
Meteor to be available by June 2002OMAHA, Nebraska — The National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs, Inc. (NCHELP) has partnered with Priority Technologies, Inc. (PTI), a leading provider of technology solutions to the national education loan industry, to design and construct the software system for the Meteor Project.
The Meteor Project, as originally envisioned by Jim Farmer and Justin Tilton of Instructional Media and Magic (IM+M), is an initiative to build Internet-based software that allows schools and borrowers to get student-specific financial aid information from multiple distributed sources. These sources include guaranty agencies, lenders, student loan servicers, secondary markets, and the federal Office of Student Financial Assistance (SFA). The development of the Meteor system is a gift from sponsoring organizations.
"Financing for postsecondary education and training requires assistance from many sources," said Brett Lief, President of NCHELP. "The technology used in the Meteor system will enable a student or school to view student financial aid information at one sitting from any location and at any time."
At the most recent Meteor Advisory Team (MAT) meeting in Omaha, PTI agreed to build Meteor as a gift to the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) industry. "PTI has committed its resources to the development of advanced technology in the national student loan industry," said Tom Anderson, director of business development at PTI. "We believe that by offering the Meteor system development, NCHELP members will be empowered to provide cutting edge services to their student and institutional customers."
Since May of this
year, PTI has been an active participant on the Advisory Team, which oversees
the business and technological development of the Meteor Project. Starting
in August, PTI facilitated the gathering of functional requirements of
the Meteor system by the MAT participants. In conjunction with the MAT,
and under the direction of NCHELP, PTI analyzed the requirements and created
a blueprint for Meteor development. PTI engineers are currently developing
a detailed system design based on the business requirements specified
by the MAT. PTI will present the project development plans to the MAT
on November 7-9 in Reno, Nevada and to the Meteor sponsor CEOs the following
week in Salt Lake City, Utah.
"We were fortunate to find a company like PTI who has extensive experience
in developing business applications using the web-based technology in
Meteor," Lief said. "Their enthusiasm for the Meteor Project
is evident by their commitment to make the Meteor software available by
this spring."
PTI employs the Unified Software Development Process in gathering system requirements, analyzing and modeling those requirements, and in the construction and testing of the software. This process adds rigor and structure to the development effort and guides the project from ideas to implementation. The MAT has been actively involved in the Unified Process through the requirements-gathering phase; and will continue to provide oversight and direction throughout the remaining development phases.
"The MAT has
driven the formal development of Meteor. Through detailed research and
reports on the business situations that Meteor will be used for, the MAT
has broken ground and laid the foundation for software development,"
said Tim Bornholtz, PTI's project leader for Meteor's software development.
Initially, Meteor will include access to Federal Family Education Loan
Program (FFELP) loans for Financial Aid Professionals. Further developments
will expand Meteor to include access for students/borrowers and may include
information on Direct Loans, Perkins Loans, Pell Grants, State Grants,
and Alternative Loans.
NCHELP represents a nationwide network of guaranty agencies, secondary markets, lenders, loan servicers, collection agencies, schools and other organizations involved in the administration of the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). NCHELP members promote student access and choice for post-secondary education and training. Over the past 35 years, FFELP lenders have provided more than $300 billion in student loans.
Meteor is an open-source software product that is available to participants at no cost. Institutions will be able to download Meteor and run it from their own web site, or they may access it from a servicer, lender, school, or guarantor. Sponsored by nearly forty NCHELP members, Meteor will aggregate student-specific financial aid information from a number of distributed sources on Stafford, PLUS, Consolidation, and Perkins loans.
