Thesis & Dissertation Instructions - University of Houston
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College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics

Students

Thesis & Dissertation Instructions

Refer to the resources below for further instructions on preparing and submitting your Thesis or Dissertation.

Thesis/Dissertation Approval Form

Make sure to use the Thesis/Dissertation Approval Form (from the Graduate School) to collect the signatures from your committee members. This form will need to be given to the NSM Office of Academic Affairs when you submit your Thesis or Dissertation. Note that the following types of signatures will be allowed: actual signature, Adobe signature within Acrobat, electronic signature.

Templates

Make sure to follow the template from the Graduate School to format and organize the front matter of your Thesis or Dissertation.

LaTeX Users

You can use this LaTeX style file to format your thesis/dissertation according to the Graduate School requirements for the front matter. The LaTeX style file also contains some formatting of the main text, but make sure to additionally follow the NSM instructions given in the PDF above.

Additional useful information for LaTeX users:

  1. Use of the Overleaf (online LaTeX build and editing system) is recommended. It is free for individual use and works well once the style file is uploaded as part of a project.
  2. The style file has all the examples and documentation on how to customize/use the included features and directives.
  3. Some minor modifications might still be required to fine-tune the way images and tables are rendered and to meet the guidelines. This cannot be included in the style file, and the author will have to format that as part of writing the LaTeX document.

Embargo, Copyright & Pre-Published Content

If you have published part of your Thesis or Dissertation in scientific articles, make sure to follow the additional instructions about copyright in the PDF below and to consult the PDF document Publisher Policies on Pre-Published Content. If you need to send a request for permission to the publisher, you can use the letter template (in WORD) below.

You can also consult a handout on Copyright and Your Thesis/Dissertation and view the video of a workshop on Copyright presented by Taylor Davis-Van Atta from the UH Libraries.

NSM theses and dissertations should be embargoed for 2 years unless no embargo is requested by your professor. Even during the embargo, the title, author and abstract of the thesis/dissertation are released to the public. If you wish for this information not to be made public during the embargo, you need to request a full record hold by filling out the Embargo Exception Request Form and submitting it to the Graduate School. This form can also be used to request a first embargo extension of 2 years or additional 1-year embargo extensions.

Other Resources