I managed to figure out a small handful of things while a grad student at RPI. Most were more interesting or useful than what I provide here, but most of those things either lose their value if I pass them on, or would require "real" writing, or revealing them could get me into hot water with at least one person. What you see here is the remainder, a tiny attempt at "paying it forward."
All information provided here is without warranty, express or implied! Otherwise, hope its useful.
"Smart List" of RPI/STS Dissertations
As a grad student at RPI, it was always a minor irritation that there wasn't a simple, well-documented (or at least well-advertised) way to get a reasonably current list of the theses or dissertations produced by graduates of the RPI STS department. While such lists would have patent utility to doctoral candidates (I'd argue), those lists that have been produced within the department from time to time are typically incomplete, not real accessible, cumbersome to maintain, and (usually) out-of-date. All masters theses and doctoral dissertations are, of course, available on file (or online) at the Folsom Library, but I've found no documentation explaining succinctly how to do a search on academic department (or on M.S. vs. Ph.D.) rather than on name, title, date, etc.
So, first the goods (as of Fall 2007): here's a link that generates a search on the Folsom Library catalog for all the STS masters theses on file. And here's a link for all STS doctoral dissertations. Both are sorted by date, from most to least recent. Neither (currently) require an RPI account or being on the campus network, and as this writing, there were 44 M.S. theses and 45 Ph.D. dissertations on the respective lists. Voilą!
More detail: While these lists may be 12-18 months behind what has actually been deposited (the gears turn slowly), the lists so generated are "smart" in that they get updated automatically by librarians (who are much better at this kind of thing anyway). Of course, if a thesis or dissertation gets misfiled under the wrong department, it won't show up in these lists! There are basically two bits of info involved here: first, the folks at Folsom put the thesis/dissertation advisor's department in the "Added Author" field (this seems to have been done with good uniformity). Second, they put Thesis (MS) or Thesis (Ph.D.) in the "Notes" field. However, these flags are not at all formalized or uniformly maintained, e.g. sometimes it's Dept. of Science and Technology Studies, other times it's Science and Technology Studies Dept., sometimes it's M.S., sometimes MS, sometimes masters, etc. The attractive alternative of the Subject: field seems to be even less uniformly maintained, so (like earlier techniques) this remains an imperfect solution.
Also, see the analysis of dissertation committees described below.
RPI Dissertation Formatting
[Update: Since putting this package together in 2007 I've switched from Mellel + Bookends to OpenOffice + Zotero, so further refinement is unlikely.]
RPI provides varying levels of support for different dissertation-writing tools. In particular, they provide the greatest support for the LaTeX document preparation system favored by many in the sciences and engineering. Among other things, this support includes a "thesis" document class that preconfigures many of the formatting particulars according to RPI's dissertation guidelines.
This package (a 131 kb gzipped tar file) is an attempt to provide similar support for the Mellel word processor and the Bookends bibliographic database management product (both of which are Mac-only products, and both of which I'm using in preparing my own dissertation). Currently in an "alpha" state, the files include a Mellel styleset and template and a Bookends bibliographic format.
While LaTeX is a fine alternative with many advantages and is an exemplar of open source software, it also presents a number of difficulties and limitations—particularly for students in the humanities and social sciences (see the bundled readme file)—and many of these are eliminated or ameliorated in the powerful and inexpensive combination of Mellel and Bookends.
A Micro-Analysis of Doctoral Dissertations and Committees Within the RPI/STS Dept
The title pretty much says it. This document will be of interest to graduate students in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, particularly those still in their first three years of graduate study. It may also be of some interest (if less utility) to students who are further along in that program or who have finished.
The Missing Manual: The RPI/STS Ph.D. Qualifying examination
I had to remove this document in the Fall of 2006 as it was getting seriously out-of-date (and I was nearing completion and not about to keep it updated). Portions of the document may turn up in an "informal" graduate handbook (allegedly—check with current grads), otherwise the next closest thing would be the official Graduate Program Handbook.
