Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Kansas State U. faculty senate discusses electronic dissertations, thesis work
By Bhagavathy Umamaheswar
Kansas State Collegian (Kansas State U.)
03/15/2006

(U-WIRE) MANHATTAN, Kan. — Electronic dissertation and thesis project was the main topic discussed at Kansas State University Faculty Senate's monthly meeting on Tuesday.

"Beginning fall 2006, doctoral students will be required to submit dissertations electronically," said Marty Courtois, computer information specialist at Information Technology Assistance Center. "In fall 2007, it will be the turn of the masters' students," he said.

Courtois said pilot tests conducted revealed that more than 90 percent of the students who tried posting their dissertations online could do it with ease.

The dissertations will have two back-up copies and be saved as PDF documents. They can be retrieved in full-text by running author or keyword searches.

"The thesis will be indexed by Web search engines," Courtois said. "Google has also agreed to include them as a part of Google Scholar."

Angela Pfizenmaier, doctoral degree specialist at the Research and Graduate School Vice Provost's Office, addressed the broad issues with regard to electronic theses, dissertations and reports.

"The three distinct areas are the submission process, access to the dissertations and preservation/archiving concerns," Pfizenmaier said. Courtois said that the new system would not differ from the traditional system.

"Various universities are in the process of trying out ETDR," Courtois said. "It reflects positively on the students and the university to have that kind of access to research."

In other business discussed at the meeting, Beth Unger, vice provost for academic services and technology, presented an annual e-mail security report.

"The number of e-mails has tripled in the past five weeks," she said. "We are planning to outsource specialists to address the problem."

Unger said those concerned with the e-mail overflow are looking at ways to curtail and do away with spam at its area of origin.

"We have come up with a new system, which will be in effect the Monday after spring break, where in spam will be stopped at the border and will not reach the inbox," she said.

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