Don't worry, get HAPPI
As part of its media relations plan, and to keep WPI's name before the public, WPI sends out news releases about student accomplishments to the students' hometown newspapers. These "hometowners" have a high probability of use by the many daily and weekly newspapers in the U.S. Because of the small staff of the WPI News Service, only a small percentage of all possible hometown news stories are ever written, resulting in missed opportunities for WPI and less student recognition. An automated system could directly use the large number of abstracts from completed projects to produce hometowners in a more efficient manner.
The HAPPI Major Qualifying Project (MQP) done by CS seniors Andrew Stone and Ralph Thompson, advised by David Brown, has created a system to capture relevant information about all of WPI's projects and to automatically send a hometowner about each by mail, email or FAX. The system uses information from the school's Banner database (for project information) and from a professional newspaper information database.
WPI Press Release: Students Get 'HAPPI' With Hometown News at WPI