cuhk phd thesis template

Deadline for final thesis submission to GSO

28 February

30 June

31 August

The requirements for a PhD degree may differ widely among disciplines and schools, but the preparation of a thesis is a standard requirement for all PhD students whatever the subject. The thesis is an indispensable component of the doctorate journey and one of the more visible products of the years of self-motivation and hard work spent on a project, as well as the self-imposed isolation from society. Indeed, for a PhD student, the thesis is a valuable record of the time spent thinking about and exploring their specialized topic. In addition, the thesis is the most tangible goal for a newly-admitted PhD student who has just ventured into the academic world, as the successful completion of a thesis usually marks the completion of the degree.

Anybody who has prepared a PhD thesis will never say that it was a simple and pain-free process. As mentioned previously, the preparation of a thesis varies from one discipline to another. This also holds true for the form of the thesis, whether it is a single manuscript that is focused on one unified research question or a combination of several research papers on related topics. The time spent on writing a thesis also differs. Whereas Arts students may draft their thesis proposal as soon as they begin the first semester, Science students will likely not sit down to write until their final year. However, a common factor in thesis writing whatever the discipline, is that rather than being a distinct act, it is an enduring and recursive process, which can result in a progression of mixed feelings. The most common and inevitable feeling, regardless of experience or ability, is probably one of pain. Pain is felt, for instance, when just two pages ‘survive’ of the thirty-page draft the student submitted to their supervisor for review; or when an entire month is spent preparing the body of a chapter, which the supervisor then reads and rejects as being unsatisfactory. Indeed, the pain can hit at any time when a novice writer runs out of ideas, hits a dead end, suffers self-doubt, receives a negative response or simply exhausted his/her energy.

What causes the pain? The obvious reason is that writing itself is difficult.  Good academic writing, a goal that many academics strive for, is the product of years of practice and training. In reality, most PhD candidates are good at thinking and planning their research, or having an internal intellectual debate, but trying to express their thoughts on paper, in a clear and coherent, well-structured and logical manner, is a different story. Academic writing is an act of discipline, which requires a combination of precision, coherence, structure, and organization. The writer Stephen King says “writing is refined thinking,”2 which in turn demands a higher level of input, diligence, and self-discipline.

In addition to writing being difficult, another area of concern is the amount of mental energy demanded during writing. Even accomplished writers cannot guarantee quality work all the time. Pain can come from various psychological obstacles, which might manifest as procrastination, writer’s block, or self-denial. In the case of writing a thesis, if these mental barriers are not well handled, then they might have grave consequences: not only could the quality of the thesis be affected, but the students’ confidence and commitment might also be compromised.

In this situation, how should a supervisor proceed to help the student manage the pain? The solutions are diverse, but the overall goal is the same - to cultivate the necessary mindset and develop the key basic habits of an academic writer.  Is there any advice or guidance that the supervisor gained from his/her own mentor, which might be still be applicable to the students today? Is there a standard or particular style, or indeed some tactic knowledge of the field that will save the students unnecessary detours? Are any resources available on campus for students to receive systematic training and constructive feedback in their writing skills? Getting answers to the above questions might offer some pain relief for academic writers in training.

Some of the pain may also be eased when students understand that writing is largely a case of rewriting, and revision is the rule rather than the exception. In this respect, supervisors may offer encouragement by sharing their own experiences, perhaps by showing the student his/her own thesis drafts (with the comments for improvement from their supervisor), or the reviewer’s comments from recently rejected manuscripts. Supervisors may also get their other students involved, to give comments and feedback, or even help with editing. This benefits everybody involved; the more junior students are better prepared if they assist others through the pain of writing a thesis before it is their turn.

Towards the end, thesis writing is a time of trade-offs and decisions, and often compromises have to be made. At this stage, the student and supervisor may have divergent ideas in terms of priorities, expectations, and career planning, and as a result there might be conflict. In order to alleviate potential problems before they start, it is usually a good idea to make an explicit and mutual decision to have a “write up” count down. This typically involves endorsing the start of drafting, finishing a work plan, clearing any major final blocks, drafting an end-game plan to schedule writing and other necessary tasks, and finally seeing the first draft in its entirety. The supervisor and student may have different ideas with regards to their estimation of the time required to achieve certain goals: for example, the student may be too anxious about the time or too ambitious about the quality of the finished thesis; while the supervisor has his/ her own work schedule to consider when setting the boundaries.

With the current trend of marketization of academic research and training, which cares more about efficiency, the product and the outcome, and is in favor of “producing” a PhD in shorter time, it causes serious consequences to the PhD candidates and their theses.  Such a trend does not work favorably for some students or some research projects, which require a longer time to come to fruition, and this may lead to a lot of extra pressure for the candidate to rush their work.  Indeed, the end of financial support is sufficient motivation for many students to complete and submit their thesis.  On the other hand, the supervisor has a duty to ensure that the thesis is of high enough quality to at least meet a certain standard of acceptability.  After all, neither the supervisor nor the students are willing to receive a ‘fail’ from the thesis committee.  On the whole, the quality of a thesis is determined by the quality of the research that precedes the writing.  Thus, the decision to submit a thesis is not usually a last-minute call, but instead follows a continuous process of monitoring from which the supervisor can tell from an early stage if there might be problems.

In most disciplines, getting the research published is not a pre-requisite for graduation. However, having a publication is certainly advantageous for graduates, from many points of view. The first question, though it sounds redundant, is why publish at all? Is it for the long-term academic career plan or to disseminate knowledge? The necessity of having publications really depends on the student’s own prospects, for example, whether they want to stay in academia conducting research after they get their PhD or not, or how prestigious a university they aspire to go to, to do a post-doc or for their next job.

The supervisor has to exercise discretion in deciding whether to encourage the student to publish, or to save time and concentrate on their thesis work. Certainly, having a publication underscores the academic accomplishment, for both the student and supervisor, and the process is instructive for an aspiring academic. However, the process of preparing a manuscript is time-consuming and an added burden when done at the same time as writing a thesis. This is another area of potential conflict between the student and supervisor, especially if one is more enthusiastic than the other for getting the work published.

In many ways, the opening quotation (made by George Watson) is rather more romantic than practical. Even though it straightforwardly describes the purpose of thesis research, it does not depict the endeavors, struggles, and conflicts involved, and it provides little useful guidance for students. The suggestion that a thesis is a “first attempt”, indicates that it is an unknown, challenging, and uncertain task for the student. The supervisor is the main person who will take care of such “unknowns, challenges and uncertainties” for the duration of the research and throughout the preparation of the thesis. However, it seems that the thesis is more a means to train an independent researcher and is less valued than a publication , which has an overall higher value in academic circles. Perhaps what supervisors might offer during the process of thesis writing is what they have experienced, what they have achieved and what they consider to be most important from their point of view.

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Research Proposals

• Reflective Journal Writing (GE)
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General Guidelines on Writing Research Proposals

• Guidelines for Producing a Research Proposal (University of Newcastle) Check out a list of questions that help you plan your research proposal
• Writing Your Research Proposal (London Metropolitan University) Learn about the structure of a research proposal section by section
• Writing Thesis and Dissertation Proposals (Pennsylvania State University) Read a practical guide with examples for research proposals
• Writing a Thesis Proposal (University of Sydney) Download a comprehensive guide to writing a thesis proposal
• How to Write a Good Postgraduate Research Proposal (University of Edinburgh) Check out the golden rules for writing research proposals
• How to Write a Research Proposal (University of Western Sydney) Check out practical tips on how to write a strong research proposal
• Applying for a PhD with LIBS (University of Lincoln) Read about additional tips for writing research proposals
• Writing a Research Proposal (Queen’s University) Avoid common mistakes and learn how to review your own research proposal
• Writing Your Research Proposal (University of Sussex) Glimpse the different requirements for research proposals for various disciplines
• Research Proposals (University of York) Skim the different requirements for research proposals by department
• How to Write your PhD by Published Work Research Proposal (University of Westminster) Learn how to present your portfolio of publications in your PhD research proposal
• Guidelines for Research Proposals (University of Brighton) Learn about possible reasons for a rejected research proposal
• Writing a Research Proposal (University of Birmingham) Watch a video to learn how to answer "what", "why" and "how" in your research proposal
• How to Write a PhD Research Proposal (University of Reading) Watch a webinar on writing research proposals for arts, humanities, and sciences
• Writing a Research Proposal (Teesside University) Go through an online tutorial with activities to check your understanding in research proposal writing

Discipline-specific Research Proposal Guidelines and Samples

• Arts (University of the Arts London; guidelines)
• Biology (Lafayette College; 2 samples)
• Business Administration (University of Swansea; guidelines)
• Chemical Engineering (MIT; guidelines and 2 samples with comments)
• Civil Engineering (University of New Mexico; guidelines)
• Civil Engineering (University of Houston; 1 sample with comments)
• Computer Science (California State University; guidelines)
• Computer Science (MIT; 1 sample)
• Education (East Carolina University; guidelines)
• Education (York St John University; 1 sample)
• Engineering (John Hopkins University; guidelines)
• English (University of St Andrews; 1 sample)
• English (University of Cambridge; guidelines and 9 samples)
• History (Open University; guidelines)
• Law (University of Birmingham; 1 sample)
• Law (University of Glasgow; guidelines)
• Law (University of Monash; guidelines and 1 sample)
• Mechanical Engineering (MIT; guidelines and 1 sample with comments)
• Media and Communication (University of Leicester; 1 sample)
• Medicine (University of California, San Diego; 1 sample)
• Music (University of Huddersfield; 1 sample)
• Politics (University of York; 3 samples)
• Public Administration (University of Plymouth; 1 sample)
• Science (University College London; 1 sample)
• Science (Yale College; 2 samples)
• Social Sciences (University College Dublin; guidelines)
• Sociology (University of Sheffield; 7 samples)

Other Resources

• Learning Apps - Learning Resources Apps (ILC)
• Learning Apps - Bibliography Apps (ILC)

Recommended Print Resources

• Cooksey, R., & McDonald, G. (2019). Surviving and thriving in postgraduate research (2nd ed.). Springer. ( electronic resource )
• Creswell, J. W. (2018). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Sage Publications. ( UL H61 .C73 2018 )
• Damaskinidis, G., & Christodoulou, A. (2019). Writing research proposals for social sciences and humanities in a higher education context . Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ( electronic resource )
• Denscombe, M. (2012).  Research proposals: A practical guide. Open University Press. ( H62 .D466 2012 )
• Fetters, M. D. (2020). The mixed methods research workbook: Activities for designing, implementing, and publishing projects . Sage. ( UL H62 .F4135 2020 )
• Gerring, J. (2017). Applied social science methodology: An introductory guide . Cambridge University Press. ( UL H61 .G4659 2017 )
• Harrington, M. (2020). The design of experiments in neuroscience (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ( MD WL20 .H37 2020 )
• Hofmann, A. H. (2017). Scientific writing and communication: Papers, proposals, and presentations (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. ( UL Q223 .H63 2017 )
• Lammasniemi, L. (2018). Law dissertations: A step-by-step guide . Routledge. ( UL Law KD442 .L36 2018 )
• Lester, J. D., & Lester, J. D. Jr. (2013).  The essential guide: Research writing across the disciplines (6th ed.). Pearson. ( CC LB2369 .L47 2013 )
• Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2016).  Designing qualitative research (6th ed.). Sage. ( UL H62 .M277 2016 )
• Privitera, G. J. (2020). Research methods for the behavioral sciences . Sage Publications. ( UL BF76.5 .P65 2020 )
• Punch, K. F. (2016).  Developing effective research proposals (3rd ed.) . ( UL H62 .P92 2016 )
• Schneider, Z., & Fuller, J. (2018). Writing research proposals in the health sciences: A step-by-step guide . Sage Publications. ( UL W20.5 .S356 2018 )
• Silverman, D. (2017). Doing qualitative research (5th ed.). Sage. ( UL H62 .S55 2017 )
• Striano, T. (2016).  Doing developmental research: A practical guide . The Guilford Press. ( UL BF713 .S766 2016 )
• Thomas, C. G. (2021). Research methodology and scientific writing (2nd ed.). Springer. ( electronic resource )
• Urban, J. B., & Van Eeden-Moorefield, B. (2018). Designing and proposing your research project (1st ed.). American Psychological Association. ( UL BF76.5 .U73 2018 )

Inspirations

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”

“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”

Winston Churchill

“The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.”

Mortimer Adler

“Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will.”

Vernon Howard

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

Benjamin Franklin

“Be observing constantly. Stay open minded. Be eager to learn and improve.”

John Wooden

“Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”

Abigail Adams

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”

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Senior Research Scientist, Salesforce AI Research

   singapore,    gmail: wangyue2714,    github: yuewang-cuhk,    google scholar,    linkedin.

I am a Senior Research Scientist at Salesforce AI Research working on building code large language models (LLMs). Specifically, I lead or co-lead a series of research projects including CodeT5 , CodeT5+ , and CodeRL , which are foundation models for code understanding and generation. Besides, I co-lead an applied project named ApexGuru, which aims to leverage LLMs for automatically detecting and optimizing anti-patterns in Apex code.

I obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Michael R. Lyu and Prof. Irwin King . Prior to that, I received my B.Sci. from Sun Yat-sen University with an outstanding graduate honor. During my study, I have been fortunate to intern at multiple cutting-edge research labs including Microsoft Research Asia, AWS AI Lab, Salesforce AI Research, and Tencent AI Lab.

Research Interests

• LLMs for Code : Large Language Model Pretraining for Code, Code Understanding and Generation.
• Multimodal Learning : Vision-Language Pretraining, Visual Dialog, Cross-media Understanding.

Publications & Preprints

• [EMNLP'23] CodeT5+: Open Code Large Language Models for Code Understanding and Generation. Yue Wang *, Hung Le*, Akhilesh Deepak Gotmare, Nghi D.Q. Bui, Junnan Li, Steven Hoi. (* indicates equal contribution) [paper] [code] [blog] [media]
• [EMNLP'23] Towards Low-Resource Automatic Program Repair with Meta-Learning and Pretrained Language Models. Weishi Wang, Yue Wang *, Steven Hoi, Shafiq Joty. (* indicates corresponding author) [paper]
• [FSE'23] RAP-Gen: Retrieval-Augmented Patch Generation with CodeT5 for Automatic Program Repair. Weishi Wang*, Yue Wang *, Shafiq Joty, Steven Hoi. (* indicates equal contribution) The 2023 Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE 2023, Long Paper). [paper] [slide]
• [arXiv'23] CODETF: One-stop Transformer Library for State-of-the-art Code LLMs. Nghi D.Q. Bui, Hung Le, Yue Wang , Junnan Li, Akhilesh Deepak Gotmare, Steven Hoi. [paper] [code]
• [NeurIPS'22] CodeRL: Mastering Code Generation through Pretrained Models and Deep Reinforcement Learning Hung Le*, Yue Wang *, Akhilesh Deepak Gotmare, Silvio Savarese, Steven Hoi. (* indicates equal contribution) The 2022 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022, Long Paper). [paper] [code] [blog] [media]
• [EMNLP'22 Findings] Detect-Localize-Repair: A Unified Framework for Learning to Debug with CodeT5 Nghi D. Q. Bui, Yue Wang , Steven Hoi. The 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2022 Findings, Long Paper). [paper]
• [EMNLP'21] CodeT5: Identifier-aware Unified Pre-trained Encoder-Decoder Models for Code Understanding and Generation Yue Wang , Weishi Wang, Shafiq Joty, and Steven C.H. Hoi. The 2021 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2021, Long Paper). [paper] [code] [blog] [media] [slide] [poster]
• [NAACL'21] Towards Modeling the Style of Translators in Neural Machine Translation Yue Wang , Cuong Hoang, and Marcello Federico. The 2021 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL 2021, Short Paper). [paper]
• [ICASSP'21] Machine Translation Verbosity Control for Automatic Dubbing Surafel M Lakew, Marcello Federico, Yue Wang , Cuong Hoang, Yogesh Virkar, Roberto Barra-Chicote, Robert Enyedi. The 2021 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2021, Long Paper). [paper]
• [EMNLP'20] VD-BERT: A Unified Vision and Dialog Transformer with BERT Yue Wang , Shafiq Joty, Michael R. Lyu, Irwin King, Caiming Xiong, and Steven C.H. Hoi. The 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2020, Long Paper). [paper] [code] [slide] [media] [leaderboard]
• [EMNLP'20] Cross-Media Keyphrase Prediction: A Unified Framework with Multi-Modality Multi-Head Attention and Image Wordings Yue Wang , Jing Li, Michael Lyu and Irwin King. The 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2020, Long Paper). [paper] [code] [video]
• [ACL'19] Topic-Aware Neural Keyphrase Generation for Social Media Language Yue Wang , Jing Li, Hou Pong Chan, Irwin King, Michael R. Lyu, Shuming Shi. The 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2019, Long Paper). [paper] [code] [slide]
• [NAACL'19] Microblog Hashtag Generation via Encoding Conversation Contexts Yue Wang , Jing Li, Irwin King, Michael R. Lyu, Shuming Shi. The 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL 2019, Long Paper, Oral). [paper] [code] [slide] [video]
• [IJCAI'18] Code Completion with Neural Attention and Pointer Networks Jian Li, Yue Wang , Michael R. Lyu, Irwin King. The 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2018, Long Paper, Oral). [paper] [slide]
• Summer 2015, Research Intern, System Group@Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing. Mentor: Cheng Chen
• Spring 2016, Visiting Student, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering@Brigham Young University, Utah, USA. Advisor: Prof. Brent Nelson
• Summer 2018, Research Intern, NLP Center@Tencent AI Lab, Shenzhen. Mentor: Prof. Jing Li
• Fall 2019, Research Intern, Salesforce Research, Singapore. Mentor: Prof. Steven Hoi and Prof. Shafiq Rayhan Joty
• Summer 2020, Applied Scientist Intern, Amazon AWS AI Lab, California, USA. Mentor: Prof. Marcello Federico and Hoang Cuong

Selected Awards

• Outstanding Graduate Student, Sun Yat-sen University, 2016
• Third Prize in the 13th Guangdong Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC GDCPC), 2015
• National Scholarship, Ministry of Education of the P. R. China, 2013

Academic Service

• Journal Reviewer: TKDE, TIST, TOSEM
• Conference PC Member: NeurIPS (2023), EMNLP (2019, 2021, 2023), ACL (2021, 2022), AAAI (2019, 2020)

In this section

• Graduate Program-Specific Contacts
• Doctoral Dissertation Policies and Procedures
• Master’s Thesis Policies and Procedures
• Thesis and Dissertation Release and Embargo Options

Thesis and Dissertation Formatting Guidelines & Deep Blue Archiving

• Graduate Studies Forms
• Three Minute Thesis Competition
• Graduate Student Appreciation Week

The purpose of these Formatting Guidelines is to make all dissertations and theses legible, accessible, preservable, and uniform in presentation. The steps you take now to format your dissertation and thesis will improve the file for future readers.

See The Mardigian Library’s  Formatting Your Thesis or Dissertation with Microsoft Word  for video tutorials designed to help you get most of the formatting of your thesis correct the first time. It is recommended that you use the dissertation/thesis template available in this guide which has most of the guidelines already incorporated.

For questions about formatting beyond what is covered in these resources, please check with your dissertation or thesis advisor.

File Format

• Submit the dissertation or thesis as a PDF file

Structure/Accessibility

Techniques for creating accessible documents, including adding alternative text for images, can be found on this  website.

Set Document Title:  Set the document title (note: this is a document property, not the filename) as your dissertation or thesis title.

Set Document Language

Set the Language of Parts (Quotations, Sections) That Are Different from the Main Language (required if applicable)

Use Correct Headings:  Use appropriate heading levels for section and subsection titles. Use “Heading 1” for main section titles (e.g. a Chapter), “Heading 2” for subsection titles (e.g. a Chapter section), and so on.

Create Lists, Columns, and Other Structures by Using the Appropriate Structural Element.  Do not use space bar, tab, or enter to arrange text in apparent tables, lists, or columns.

Images, Figures, Tables, Media

• Include descriptive alt text for all images and figures to convey the meaning and context of a visual item in a digital setting (do not use images of tables.)
• Use at least 2-inch top margin on the Title Page.
• Use 2-inch top margin on the first page of every chapter and major section (Acknowledgements, List of Figures, Bibliography, etc.…)
• Use at least 1-inch margins (top, bottom, left, right) on all pages. 

Text, Fonts, Color, Spacing

• Use a legible font, size 12 point, black color for all body text. Recommended fonts include Times or Times New Roman (serif fonts) or Arial (sans-serif font). Images and text within images may be in color.
• Headings may be visually different than body text (bigger, bold) and no bigger than size 16 point.
• Font size for footnotes, endnotes, captions, tables, figures, and equations may be smaller than the body text and no less than 9 point.
• Text in the Front Matter that links to a location within the dissertation or thesis (from the Table of Contents, for example) should not be underlined or outlined as hyperlinks.
• Use embedded fonts to ensure all font information in your document is secured in your PDF.
• Use either 1.5-line or double-line spacing throughout for all body text. 
• Use single-line spacing for text in tables, lists, footnotes/endnotes, figure/table legends/captions, and bibliographic entries (with a blank line between each citation or entry). 

Numbering and Page Numbering

• Number chapters consecutively and name them as follows: Chapter [#] [Title of Chapter]. For example, Chapter 1 Introduction. 
• Include the chapter number and name as a heading on the first page of chapter and in the Table of Contents.
• Number all tables, figures, appendices, etc. consecutively and name them as follows: Table [#] [Caption/Title/Legend]. 
• Tables, Figures, etc. may be numbered simply using whole numbers throughout the document (Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3) or by combining the chapter number and table, figure, etc. number per chapter (Figure 2.1, Figure 2.2, Figure 3.1). Choose one system from an appropriate style guide and use it consistently.
• Include a List of Figures, List of Tables, etc. in the front matter if the dissertation or thesis includes more than one figure, table, illustration, appendix, etc. (required if applicable)
• List of Figures (or List of Tables, List of Illustrations, List of Appendices, etc.) includes the title of each, its caption/title/legend, and page number on which it begins.
• Include page numbers in the front matter, centered in the footer, using lowercase Roman numerals, beginning on page ii (the first page after the Identifier/Copyright page).
• Include page numbers in the dissertation text and following sections, centered in the footer, using Arabic numerals, beginning on page 1.

Components of the Dissertation and Thesis

Include the following components, in the following order. All required components must be included.

Use the page numbering conventions given below. Every section below starts on a new page with 2-inch top margin.

Title Page (required)

No page number. No page count.

• See the section below for details of component requirements.

Frontispiece (Illustration or Epigraph) (optional)

Identifier/Copyright Page (required)

• No page number. Start page count here.
• See section below for details of component requirements.

Dedication (optional)

• Page numbers required. Start lowercase Roman numerals (starting with ii) here.
• Acknowledgments (optional)

Page numbers required. Lowercase Roman numerals.

Preface (optional)

Table of Contents (required)

List of Tables, List of Figures, etc. (required if applicable)

• List of Tables required if there is more than one table, etc.

List of Illustrations/Photos (required if applicable)

List of Appendices (required if applicable)

List of Abbreviations, List of Acronyms, List of Symbols (optional)

Abstract (required)

Dissertation or Thesis Text (required)

• Page numbers required. Start Arabic numerals here.
• Appendices (optional)

Bibliography or Reference section(s). (required)

Page numbers required. Arabic numerals. Insert at the end of each chapter, or the end of the dissertation/thesis, in the format preferred by the discipline.

Title Page Components

Include the following components on the title page, in the following order. Begin each item on a new line.

• At least 2 inch top margin on Title Page. 
• Complete dissertation  or master’s thesis title, centered, and capitalized in title case. 
• Your author name should match your legal name or preferred name in Wolverine Access
• You may use initial(s) for middle name(s).
• The following text, including line breaks, centered and single line-spaced. 

A dissertation (thesis) submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Name of Degree (Name of Program) in The University of Michigan-Dearborn YEAR

• The text, “Doctoral Committee  or Master’s Thesis Committee:” left justified. 
• List chair or co-chairs first (in alphabetical order by surname if more than one) with “Chair” or “Co-Chair” after their titles and names.
• List other committee members in alphabetical order, by last name.
• Professor rank (e.g., Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Emeritus Professor) or title (e.g., Dr.)
• Complete full name
• Affiliation, if not affiliated with University of Michigan (e.g., name of university, college, corporation, or organization)

Identifier/Copyright Page Components

Include the following components on the identifier/copyright page, in the following order. Begin each item on a new line, centered.

• Your full legal name (Required)
• Your @umich.edu email address (Required)
• Your ORCID iD (required only for PhD candidates)

ORCID iD is a unique digital identifier that you control and that distinguishes you from other researchers.

• ORCID iD profile URL (Recommended)
• Copyright notice. (Recommended)

Copyright notice notifies readers that you hold the copyright to this work and when it was established.

Use the following format: © Full Name YEAR

Final Formatting Checks

Before submission, double-check the following:

• All numbered series (pages, chapters, tables, figures, etc.) are consistently formatted and consecutive throughout the document.
• All entries in the table of contents and lists match contents as titled/ordered in the dissertation text.
• References/Bibliography entries are complete and match the formatting preference of your discipline.

Thesis or Dissertation Embargo

The thesis or dissertation is submitted as public evidence of your scholarly research and accomplishment. A thesis or dissertation and abstract is normally made publicly available upon degree conferral when it is deposited electronically in Deep Blue. If a student wishes to postpone public release of the final product, also called an embargo, the student should discuss this option with his or her faculty advisor. It has always been the university's expectation that every dissertation and abstract will be released upon conferral of the degree. Only in specific circumstances may release of a thesis or dissertation be deferred, and then only for a limited period of time. The student is responsible for requesting an embargo.

Embargo forms can be found at:  "Thesis and Dissertation Release and Embargo Options”

Deep Blue Archiving 

Required for doctoral dissertations and highly recommended for Master’s Thesis. The final pdf document of your dissertation or thesis must be submitted electronically to the Mardigian Library. This digital PDF will be the copy of record and will be archived in  Deep Blue . Deep Blue is a digital repository that is part of the University of Michigan Library. 

To submit your document, you need to provide:

• Your ORCID iD  
• Keywords that describe the subject, concepts, theories, and methods used in your document, to help others find and retrieve your document
• A copy of your thesis or dissertation in PDF format
• Optional – up to two supplementary files (no larger than 50 MB each), such as an audio file, spreadsheet, or a software program

To maintain the usability and appearance of your document, please review the  Best Practices for Producing High Quality PDF Files , available on Deep Blue.

If you have supplemental materials (such as data) that should also be made publicly available and associated with your dissertation or thesis, consider reaching out to  [email protected]  for help determining whether these should be deposited into one of the Deep Blue repositories.

Once your document is submitted to Deep Blue by the library, you will receive an email containing the DOI and a URL to access the document. It will also be added to the Mardigian Library catalog and made available on Google Scholar. If no embargo is requested, it may take three to four weeks for your document to become available.

Submit Final Thesis/Dissertation to Deep Blue

More support.

• Library Guide to  Formatting Your Thesis or Dissertation with Microsoft Word  and Video Tutorials.
• UM IT accessibility guide for  creating accessible documents .
• Guide for  embedding all fonts in PDFs generated with LaTeX or PDFLaTeX .

Contact your  subject librarian  for assistance on a wide range of topics including literature searching, citation management, and much more.

Download the Formatting Checklist

Office of graduate studies.

WLRC Module 3: UW Thesis Template and Technical Skills for Writing

(recommended you complete this session during 5th MSc. term or 10th PhD. term) 

Learn how to use the UW thesis template and incorporate your references when writing your MSc or PhD thesis. This is also an opportunity to ask questions and troubleshoot known problems.

Winter/Spring

When to take this

Approximately, 5th term (MSc), 10th term (PhD)

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