Thesis work should be preserved

By James Bickford

You may have noticed a growing panic in your class of 2008.

We are faced with the inevitable end of our undergraduate experience. We are faced with a very big change in our lives, lifestyles, support networks, sleep patterns and social lives.

The real panic for me, however, occurred two days ago when I realized that my senior design project was due in less than three weeks.

Seniors across campus are frantically digging through the learning commons, combing their brains for useful tidbits of information to come up with an interesting -- or at least halfway decent -- thesis.

For some, this has been four years in formation. For others, it will be a last tribute to the long-lived college tradition: procrastination.

The biggest misfortune is that the sun is out, the beach is calling, the last get-together with friends seems to always occupy time and even the awesome spaces of the learning commons are not enough to comfort the spring soul inside many of us.

Perhaps it is ironic that I complain about the sun when my senior design project involves solar panels, but I'd still rather be getting that tan.

What a friend of mine pointed out the other day is probably what irks me the most, however.

Once we are done with the project and we have presented our findings, what then?

After the presentation, the thesis is given a "so-what" title. In many colleges around the world, undergraduate theses are printed and placed in a special place in the library.

This collection of original work is a hallmark to each institution. Given that Santa Clara is focused on undergraduate work, it seems like a major loss that we do not save, preserve or collect the original academic research conducted by so many of our students. Instead, there is a very small section in our library with a couple senior theses, the most recent from 2005.

Granted, most of us go through a thesis or some other kind of final project and learn something. That is the point of the thesis or project. The problem is that the only person that gains from the experience is the individual who did it.

Instead of being able to browse research to figure out what a mechanical engineering student in 1942 thought about the profession, all I have is perhaps a few pieces of scrap metal in our machine shop that have managed to make it through the years.

Other than a name in the school registrar, there is probably no major indication that a bright student from the 1800s came through Santa Clara and came up with an original thesis.

I feel that Santa Clara is missing a huge opportunity to preserve some of the creative thought and academic research that its students do prior to graduating.

It seems that our thesis work is more an exercise, a formality for graduation, than a real contribution to our respective fields.

From business, through philosophy, art, music and engineering, we should be responsible for some research, and it should be added to the Santa Clara collection of academia.

In engineering alone I have seen some pretty amazing stuff that is decaying in parts piles. Might this not be the same for all the schools here at Santa Clara -- decaying ideas, thoughts and concepts that are picked over, but never made to serve the public good?

So when I am in the learning commons writing my senior thesis on why solar panels are such a "bright" idea, I won't just be looking out the windows lovingly at the sun.

I will also be looking at all that brand new book space, the giant Automated Retrieval System and the currently empty stacks, wondering why I can't read about the class of 1910's philosophic, artistic, creative, literary and scientific thoughts. At the very least I will wonder why we haven't taken steps to digitize the information.

I think it is a real shame that we lose so much of Santa Clara this way.

James Bickford is a senior mechanical engineering major.