What were you doing in 1983? Even if you were already born, of adult age, and at the leading edge of technology, marveling at the revolutionary new Lotus 1-2-3 software on your IBM PC, you almost certainly weren't launching a web startup. Unless you happened to be French.

DALE EDWIN MURRAY When campus president Wallace Loh walked into Juan Uriagereka's office last August, he got right to the point. "We need courses for this thing - yesterday!" Uriagereka, associate provost for faculty affairs at the University of Maryland in College Park, knew exactly what his boss meant.