About RAU Awards Institute�

Royal Awards University was founded in 2001 by Nikola Kitanovic with several goals: to help those who wanted to begin an awards program; to help those who wanted to improve their sites in order to earn awards; to evaluate sites upon request for family-friendliness; and for the recruiting and education of web site evaluators (for web-building techniques and for ethics).  The gold-and-black badge soon became a familiar site on awards programs, as many sites received their family-friendly certification, and RAU Professors began to assist webmasters.  But the site was forced to close in 2004 along with its related sites, and a fine resource was lost to the Internet.

In May of 2004, with the blessing of Nikola Kitanovic, the site was re-launched by Vance Elderkin under the new name of RAU Awards Institute�.  The purpose of the site was narrowed in order to concentrate on resources for awards masters. 

Nikola Kitanovic, Founder and Dean Emeritus of RAU Awards Institute�, is a resident of Serbia and Montenegro (formerly a part of Yugoslavia).  He is a talented and prolific writer, artist, web designer and entrepreneur.  He created the Kingdom of Internet, an ambitious project designed to make the Internet a better place by lifting it to a higher ethical and aesthetic level -- making it a place where all people, regardless of background, could interact and learn from each other.  Among the many branches of the Kingdom of Internet were WebsAwards (an awards-rating index), Mystery Award System (an awards-rating index combines with an awards program), Anti-Virus Coalition (an initiative to fight computer viruses), Royal International Webmaster Association (a business resource for webmasters) and, of course, Royal Awards University.  He also operated several web awards programs, the last of which was the Absolut Awards.  Due to circumstances in his life, these sites closed or went off line in 2004.  (WebsAwards was revived and now operates under different management.)

Currently, Kitanovic operates Raul Amon, a company that makes an internationally-distributed line of natural cosmetics, and Org by Nikkolai, an original line of fashion designs.

Vance Elderkin, Director of RAU Awards Institute�, lives in the state of North Carolina in the USA.  Since 2000, he has operated the Internet Beacon Awards, a top-rated web awards program.  He also operates Quality Independent Web Awards (QIWA), a small certification and listing service for independent web awards, and served for three years as Director of Operations for the Association for Positive Ethical eXchange (APEX), an organization that promotes ethical behavior on the Internet.

Professionally, Elderkin was, until recently, a Lecturer in Communication at North Carolina State University, specializing in communication media.  He is a Certified Internet Webmaster Associate and served as his department's webmaster.  Prior to entering academic life, he worked for more than 20 years as a radio and television broadcaster.  He is currently a freelance writer and voiceover announcer.