The Meteor Project, which provides a one-stop, on-line customer service resource for schools, was launched on September 3, 2002, according to the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs (NCHELP), one of the sponsors and chief facilitator of the project. Meteor was the subject of an interesting and informative interest session at the 2002 NASFAA Conference in New Orleans.
The Meteor Project software is free to the financial aid community, Conference presenters Tim Cameron of NCHELP and Brian Allison of USA Funds told the session. It provides financial aid professionals and students with the ability to access student-specific financial aid information from a variety of data providers through an access provider Web site acting as a portal to launch the Meteor channel. Institutions implementing the Meteor software can be access providers. Early adopters providing data and hosting the Meteor software include the Connecticut Student Loan Foundation, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, and the National Student Loan Clearinghouse.
The Meteor software uses open source Web services architecture and is freely available. It provides for the seamless aggregation of information from a variety of sources, and there is no need for a central data repository. The software was developed using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) in collaboration with the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council's (PESC) XML Forum. It is also designed to be consistent with the Department of Education's Common Record and the NCHELP CommonLine XML Initiative.
For more information about the Meteor Project, visit the Meteor Web site at http://www.nchelp.org/Meteor.htm. The Conference session PowerPoint presentation is available on the NASFAA Web Site.
By Ellen Blackmun
NASFAA Director of Electronic Services Projects
Posted September 13, 2002 on www.NASFAA.org, the Web Site of the
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA).
Copyright 2002. Redistribution to non-NASFAA institutions is prohibited
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