uf graduate school thesis template

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs): Graduate School ETDs

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About Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Doctor of philosophy.

The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) is a research degree and is granted on evidence of general proficiency, distinctive attainment in a special field, and particularly on ability for independent investigation as demonstrated in a dissertation presenting original research with a high degree of literary skill. Consequently, doctoral programs are more flexible and varied than those leading to other graduate degrees. The Graduate Council does not specify what courses are required for the Doctor of Philosophy degree. General requirements: the program should be unified in relation to a clear objective, the program should have the considered approval of the student’s entire supervisory committee, and the program should include an appropriate number of credits of doctoral research.

Doctor of Education

The Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree offers advanced professional training and academic preparation for the highest levels of educational practice. Programs are available in the School of Teaching and Learning, the School of Special Education, School Psychology, and Early Childhood Studies, and the School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education.

Master's Degree

For master's degrees that require a thesis, each candidate must prepare and present a thesis that shows independent investigation. It must be acceptable, in form and content, to the supervisory committee and to the Graduate School. The work must be of publishable quality and must be in a form suitable for publication, guided by the Graduate School’s format requirements. The academic unit is responsible for quality and scholarship. The Graduate Council requires the Graduate School Editorial Office, as agents of the Dean of the Graduate School, to briefly review theses and dissertations for acceptable format, and to make recommendations as required. See the Graduate Catalog for your first semester to determine which degrees require a thesis and which have non-thesis options.

For more information on the University of Florida's doctoral and master's degree programs, see the Graduate Degrees page of the Graduate Catalog.

Related Links

• Institutional Repository at the University of Florida (IR@UF)
• Graduate Editorial Office thesis and dissertation resources
• Graduate School ETD Formatting
• Making your work accessible
• UF LibGuide: Copyright
• UF LibGuide: Fair Use
• UF LibGuide: Open Access

Additional Publishing Options

In addition to the freely available electronic version available in the IR@UF, authors have additional publishing options for their thesis or dissertation. The Libraries do not endorse any binding service or publishing platform. However, we are happy to discuss your options to the best of our ability. If you have questions, please reach out to [email protected] .

In 2018, the Smathers Libraries and BiblioLabs began a program to offer retail print-on-demand options to authors of digital theses and dissertations, at no cost to the author. Authors retained the copyright to their work. The first batch of pilot titles went live in January 2019. As of March 2021, more than 400 unique titles are available on Amazon. Books are available for sale from sellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble as hardcover (priced at $69) or paperback (priced at $49). Price is not affected by number of pages or the presence of color illustrations. Authors receive a 20% royalty rate after expenses.

As of Spring 2021, the Libraries and BiblioLabs are reviewing their partnership. This page will be updated with information as it becomes available.

ProQuest Traditional Publishing

NOTE: If you have chosen a restriction period for your thesis or dissertation, ProQuest ® will not produce bound copies until your restriction at UF (and at ProQuest if you chose one there) expires. They will charge your credit card immediately after you place an order. If, for example, you chose a Secret for 2 Years restriction and placed an order for a bound copy while completing your ProQuest submission form, they will charge you immediately but it will be over two years until you receive that book.

The ProQuest Traditional Publishing option makes your work available for sale through ProQuest’s Dissertations Express service and lists it in ProQuest’s Dissertations and Theses subscription database. There is no cost to the author for participation. Authors receive 10% royalties on the net revenue of sales of their work, and royalties are paid when accrued earned royalties reach $25. Authors retain the copyright to their work. For more information, please review the full Traditional Publishing Agreement .

ProQuest Open Access Publishing PLUS

ProQuest Open Access Publishing PLUS adds to their Traditional Publishing service by providing public access to your work in PQDT Open, their online repository of open access graduate works. There is a one-time fee of $95 to participate. PQDT Open provides free access to the citation, abstract, and full text (including supplementary files) for graduate works for all institutional subscribers to ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT). For more information, review the ProQuest Open Access Publishing PLUS product page .

Other Options

The Libraries do not endorse any binding service or publishing platform and recommend that you do your own research. Some options to consider include:

• GradWorks Online ( http://gradworksonline.com ): a service that initially started at Brigham Young University (BYU) but is now open to everyone.
• The HF Group ( http://thesisondemand.com/ ): provides commercial binding for libraries as well as individualized service, also offers Thesis on Demand.
• Lulu ( https://www.lulu.com/create/educational-books ): provides a flexible platform for independent academic publishing and can produce printed books in a variety of bindings and paper types. Lulu is a Certified B Corporation ( https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/)
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Graduate Student Success Center

• Thesis and Dissertation Information

Thesis and Dissertation Template

The Graduate College offers a thesis/dissertation template that contains all required content and formatting. You can either write your document from within the template or apply the template’s formatting to your previously created work.

Need help working in the template? Schedule an appointment today.

Before You Begin

The first time you download the template, save the template file to your computer before you begin work on your document. This is important if you are composing your thesis/dissertation within the template or if you are copying and pasting your content into the template. You may need the original template file in the future.

Please note: We offer the Google Doc template for initial drafts of your thesis/dissertation to share easily with your committee chair. We do not accept Google Documents as the final document of your thesis/dissertation. Google Docs does not have the functionality we require for our final theses/dissertations. Please use the Google Doc template while keeping in mind that you will need to convert your document to Microsoft Word later.

Download Thesis and Dissertation Template (Word Doc) Download Thesis and Dissertation Template (LATEX) Download Thesis and Dissertation Template (Google Doc)

Word Template Last Updated: February 2021

Word Document Template Information

Download instructions.

• Download the Boise State Template from the orange callout ribbon above.
• Show the downloaded file in the Downloads folder.
• Right click and select Open
• Enable Content
• Click File > Save As and name the file, for instance, Boise_State_Template.dotm (note the extension is “.dotm”) and  Save as type:  Word Macro-Enabled Template (*.dotm) .  It is recommended locating this file on your desktop – it may come in handy if you need to reattach the template to your document in the future (see below).
• Close this file.

Working Within the Template

To work within the template, styles are applied throughout the document. These styles can be found by clicking the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the Styles section in the Home tab. To apply a style, simply highlight the text that you wish to format and click the appropriate name from the styles list.

When entering your own work into the template, be sure to apply the following styles to the appropriate parts of your document. Failure to do so will mean that your Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables will be incorrect.

• Format a Heading 1 in all caps, and centered
• Format a Heading 2 in title-caps, bold, and centered
• Format a Heading 3 in title-caps, underlined, and aligned left
• Format a Heading 4 in title-caps, underlined, and indented once
• Format a Heading 5 in title-caps, underlined and indented twice
• Figure Captions are bolded and centered in the template. They may also be justified.
• Table Captions are bolded and aligned left in the template. They may also be justified.
• Appendix Heading 2
• Appendix Heading 3

Formatting Landscape Pages

When setting pages of your document to landscape orientation to accommodate large figures or tables, you must reformat their page numbers so that they will still be visible after binding.

• Open the landscape page’s header by double-clicking within the header.
• Deselect Link to Previous, located in the Navigation section of the Design tab. Repeat this step for the page following the landscape page.
• Delete the landscape page’s current page number.
• Click Insert → Page Number (in the Header & Footer section)→Page Margins.
• Select Landscape Page Numbers.

Note: If your other pages’ pagination disappears after inserting landscape page numbers, you likely did not turn off Link to Previous. Undo your changes to the page numbers and restart the instructions.

Replacing Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables

After your writing and editing is complete, you will need to replace the Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables.

• Right click the existing TOC, LOF, or LOT.
• Click Update Field.
• Select Update entire table and click Ok.

Note: All other lists (such as a List of Abbreviations or List of Graphs) are not updated automatically. Instead, the template includes examples of manually-created lists that can be altered to fit your needs.

Attaching the Template to a Preexisting Document. If your document is at or near completion, it may be easier for you to attach the template to your existing file than to paste your document into a new template.

Formatting Styles and Applying Styles

Before attaching the Thesis/Dissertation template to your document, you must first apply the following styles to the appropriate sections of your work. It does not matter how these styles look – when you first apply them they will not look right – only that the names of the styles match those in the following list exactly. After you have applied all the styles and attach the template the document will be formatted correctly.

These styles can be found by clicking the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the Styles section in the Home tab. Leave this menu open while you work through the document. To apply a style, simply highlight the text that you wish to format and click the appropriate name from the styles list.

Attaching Styles

• Access the Styles menu by clicking the lower-right corner of the Styles box on the Home tab in Windows. Keep this menu open on the side of your screen and apply the styles to your document as you work.
• Highlight the text you wish to format (it is often only necessary to “click in” the section you wish to format)
• Click the appropriate style from the Styles menu

Note: If the style you are looking for is not included in the list you may need to create the style (see next).

Creating Styles

Some required styles will not be listed in the premade styles, thus you will need to create them yourself.

• Highlight the text that you wish to format
• Right click the text and select Styles → Save Selection as a New Quick Style.
• Enter the appropriate style name and click OK.

Note: Remember, it does not matter how these styles look at this time, only that the style names match the names listed in the table above.

Attaching the Template

After applying styles to your document, you can attach the template, which will fix most of your document’s formatting issues.

• Download the Boise State Thesis and Dissertation Template and save it to your computer. See instructions above under “Before you Begin.”
• Open the Word document containing your thesis/dissertation, click file, click options, click add-ins, and select templates from the Manage drop down menu at the bottom of the page. Click go.
• In the Document Template section, click Attach.
• Navigate to the folder in which you saved the template and select it.
• Important: Check the box labeled “Automatically update document styles.”

Adjusting Margins

• Click Ctrl+A to select the entire document.
• In the Home ribbon, click layout, click margins and select the mirror margin option that contains inside margin 1.5″, top and bottom margins 1.”

Setting Page Numbers

Be careful that you set section breaks between front matter and body text and also between portrait and landscape-oriented pages (see Manually Formatting Your Document for instructions on setting page breaks). Each has a different way of formatting their pagination.

Front Matter

•  Set a continuous section break immediately before the Heading 1 on the first page that follows your approval pages.
• Set a continuous section break immediately before the title of Chapter 1.
• Open the footer on the first page following your approval page by clicking the Footer button in the Header & Footer section of the Insert tab and selecting Edit Footer.
• Deselect Link to Previous, located in the Navigation section of the Design tab. This step is only necessary for the first numbered page in the front matter.
• Insert page numbers. Front matter page numbers should be in lowercase Roman numerals and should be centered at the bottom of each page.
• Double-click inside the footer of the first page in Chapter 1.
• Deselect Link to Previous, located in the Navigation section of the Design tab. This step is only necessary for the first page in the body text.
• Delete the page numbers from the footer.
• Open the header on the same page by double-clicking inside the header.
• Deselect Link to Previous, located in the Navigation section of the Design tab.
• Insert alpha-numeric page numbers, starting with 1, into the upper right-hand corner of the pages.

Landscape Pages

• Repeat step 3 on the page following the landscape page.
• Click Insert → Page Number (in the Header & Footer section) → Page Margins.

Inserting Table of Contents and Lists of Figures or Tables

Finally, after your document’s content is complete, you will need to create the Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables.

• In the Home ribbon, select References , then select Table of Contents and choose the first option.
• To build your list of tables or figures do the following: on the Home ribbon, select references, select Insert List of Table of Figures, on the options drop down select either table captions or figure captions depending on which you are creating. You will then have to manually insert the heading.

Note: The template does not include macros for automatically generating other lists such as a List of Abbreviations or List of Graphs. However, it does include example lists that can be copied, pasted, and altered to meet your needs.

Helpful Tips

• Access the Styles menu by clicking the lower-right corner of the styles box on the Home tab in Windows. Keep this menu open on the side of your screen, or on a second screen, and apply the styles to your document as you work. To make the document styles behave, use the styles in the template. For example, for all Heading 1s, use the Heading 1 style, which will automatically insert a break and a 2 inch margin, etc. As long as the styles are used, the document should behave appropriately, and the table of contents will include the headings once updated. To modify the Table of Contents, click once to highlight the table in gray, right-click and select “Update Entire Field.”
• Show formatting marks as you work in your document.  Click on the File tab, then Options, Display, and click on the box “Show all formatting marks” and OK.

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Submitting your thesis / dissertation

Before you submit your thesis or dissertation, you must ensure it meets UC Irvine's formatting requirements. The formatting requirements are in place to ensure a uniform presentation of UC Irvine theses and dissertations in ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses Global database and the UC's institutional repository, eScholarship . You are responsible for submitting a manuscript that is free of errors and that complies with the formatting requirements of this manual.

• Thesis / Dissertation Formatting Manual

Check out a recording of a workshop hosted in Spring 2023.

2023 Thesis/Dissertation Workshop from UCI Libraries Education+Outreach on Vimeo .

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