RIT is the lead university in a $500,000 initiative funded by the National Science Foundation that will produce instructional support material for software engineering and make it available on a new Web site.

Michael Lutz, RIT Motorola Professor of Software Engineering, is collaborating with faculty from Georgia Tech, Texas Tech University, Drexel University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the Milwaukee School of Engineering to develop the Web site. Co-op and graduate students from RIT, Georgia Tech and Texas Tech will assist.

Known as SWENET - The Network Community for Software Engineering Education - the Web site will be a repository for software-engineering material used by academia and industry for course development and training.

"SWENET will become a rich mine of useful information and tools to help accelerate the adoption of software engineering in academia," Lutz predicts.

Currently in the preliminary stages of development at www.swenet.org, SWENET was formally launched at the Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training in February.