Paper Drive
PATRICK CANTWELL '04, JEFFREY Iacono '05 and Peteteboom '05 have found a good use for all the theses gathering dust in Baker-Berry Library—their own nonprofit Web site, UGResearch.org.
The site allows undergraduates to exchange their senior theses. It operates much like a journal article archive, with the twist that it provides a forum for the scholarship of the countless undergrads across the country who dedicate them selves to serious research during their senior year. It also exposes students to work done by other undergrads in their field, preventing the knowledge base across universities from becoming stale. 'A lot of research that undergraduates are doing these days is really fantastic, and it's a shame that most undergraduate theses end up only in hardcopy form in campus libraries," says Cantwell.
The site is free for students who register; they just need a college e-mail account. UGResearch has a "Top 10" home page that pops up when users sign in, listing the most frequently downloaded theses. The "Top 10" list quickly increases circulation of these theses as well as interest in the subject matter. Cantwell and Noteboom came up with the idea for the Web site and approached computer programmer lacono for his tech savvy.
Most of the more than 100 theses uploaded so far are from Dartmouth students who have learned of the site by word of mouth. Students who are already registered as members can send their friends e-mail invitations to register.
Currently UCResearch's founders are paying for the site themselves while attempting to obtain institutional support from Dartmouth and other universities. Among other things, money is being sought to expand the site's capacity. Responding to some administrators' concerns about plagiarism, Noteboom says, "Whereas plagiarism sites seek to undermine the work of others, UGResearch.org gives students the public credit their research deserves. First, all users are required to register with their school accounts before using the Web site. This ensures that people cannot disguise their identity with Yahoo accounts. Second, we keep track of all downloaded theses and will submit the information to a school upon request."
The site's creators see it as an outlet for student work, but also as a possible networking tool leading to graduate programs or even publishing and employment opportunities. Iacono has intriguing updates to UGResearch planned for the future-advanced searching and notification options, an internal messaging system to contact other users and advice from previous thesis writers. Eventually they would like to expand this project internationally and launch GradResearch.org to showcase graduate scholarship.
In the meantime, two of the entrepreneurs are generating scholarship of their own: Cantwell is working on a masters at the Thayer School of Engineering and Noteboom is studying for a master's degree on a Marshall scholarship at the London School of Economics. Iacono works in finance for Lehman Brothers.
QUOTE/UNQUOTE "While our grandparents' generationhas earned the epitaph of 'The Greatest Generation it is quite likely that our generation will be deemed 'The Awkwardest Generation.' " DANIEL BELKIN '08, WRITING IN THE DARTMOUTH JANUARY 16
