The Center for Applied Software Engineering Research (CeASER) was founded in August 2000, within the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Butler University. The mission of the center is to provide a cooperative environment between academia, industry and not-for-profit organizations in the community. At the same time, the center serves as an incubator that enhances the education and retention of Computer Science students by exposing them to applied software engineering research and modern practices. The center's focus is on industrial strength, large-scale software design, software development and maintenance methods, software engineering tools and environments, component-based software engineering techniques, as well as the business side of software engineering.