Michigan Tech University Graduate Thesis And Dissertation With LaTeX
March 29th, 2007 @ 19:20:53 -0400
Most of us, students in the graduate school, do have to write thesis/dissertation as part of the graduation process and some/many of us use LaTeX to prepare our documents. Rather unfortunately, there does not exist a style file or template files to easily generate Title and Approval pages. For the past several years, thanks to a fellow graduate student & dear friend named Mike Larsen, I have been toying around with this document preparation system and finally decided to, as part of my own dissertation writing process, write up a generic style file and template files to less-painfully produce MS Thesis or Ph.D Dissertation.
What is LaTeX?
LaTeX is based on Donald Knuth’s TeX typesetting language or certain extensions. LaTeX was first developed in 1985 by Leslie Lamport, and is now being maintained and developed by the LaTeX3 Project. It is widely used by mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, engineers, and scholars in academia and the commercial world, and by others as a primary or intermediate format (e.g. translating DocBook and other XML-based formats to PDF) because of the quality of typesetting achievable by TeX. It offers programmable desktop publishing features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout and bibliographies.
Where does one get started?
If one were to Google! for LaTeX Document Preparation System, a few thousand documents show up that offer help. There is also a TeX User’s Group (tex-l@mtu.edu) on Michigan Tech Campus and one can tap into their resources as well.
Gimme the files!
After making sure that your computer actually has a working installation of LaTeX and that you know the basics, start off by downloading the appropriate zip file. Upon unzipping, it should result in an appropriately named folder. Retain the file names as they are.
MS Thesis – Linux MS Thesis – Windows PhD Dissertation – Linux PhD Dissertation – Windows
Last Update: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:36:38 -0400
Should I make any changes?
Yes. Read through My[Thesis/Dissertation].tex and
- Decide whether you want to print your work as a single/double sided document. If you wish to conserve paper and go with double sided option, no changes are necessary. If you wish to choose single sided option for any particular reason, make the lines
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% Document Type with Options %documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{report} % For Single Sided Printing \documentclass[twoside,letterpaper,12pt]{report}
look like
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% Document Type with Options \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{report} % For Single Sided Printing %documentclass[twoside,letterpaper,12pt]{report}
- Fill in the details for the following in the preamble:
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\thesistitle{Beginning, Evolution, Sustenance And Future Of Our Very Own Sweet Little Universe} \thesisauthor{Mary A. Doe} \dept{Physics} \program{} % Optional \deptchair{Dr. Dept Chair} \padvisor{Dr. My Advisor} \cadvisor{} % Optional \acommone{Dr. Adv Comm One} % Does not show up for MS Thesis \acommtwo{Dr. Adv Comm Two} % Does not show up for MS Thesis \acommthree{Dr. Adv Comm Three} % Does not show up for MS Thesis \acommfour{} % Optional; Does not show up for MS Thesis \univ{MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY} \year{2007}
- Put in proper content into Acknowledgments.tex, Dedication.tex, Abstract.tex, Chapter1.tex, …, Chapter3.tex (include more Chapters if you need), Appendix.tex
- Put in appropriate references in My[Thesis/Dissertation].bib and pick an appropriate bibliography style in Bibliography.tex
- Place all your graphs in Graphs folder and other images in Images folder.
Are there any advantages of using this template?
Apart from modularizing your document preparation process and producing Title & Approval pages in accordance with Michigan Tech’s Grad School prescribed standards, using this set of files provides following features:
- Facility to accommodate two advisors – for MS/Ph.D
- Facility to accommodate fourth advisory committee member – for Ph.D
- Page Numbers in Table of Contents (List of Figures, List of Tables and Index as well), Table/Figure/Bibliography references are all hyperlinks.
- With double sided printing, it automatically inserts a blank page (if necessary) to start the new chapter on an odd numbered page (Thanks to my dear friend, Jacob Fugal, for working on this feature)
- Appropriate margins for single/double sided printing.
- Fonts are embedded – the PDF looks 99.99% the same when printed as it looks when it’s viewed on computer.
- Many other nicer features that one can learn about by reading the corresponding style files.
- If using Linux/UNIX or may be even Mac, the entire process of compiling/processing and generating PDF could as simple as typing
make - Generate a distributable version of thesis / dissertation and associated files / folders by typing just
make distro - May even save you a few extra nights of sleep that you would have otherwise spent in making these things work yourself [if you are in grad school and are working on your thesis/dissertation, I hope you do know that sleep is a luxury and not a necessity].
If all went well, what would it look like?
MS Thesis Cover Page
MS Thesis Approval Page
PhD Dissertation Cover Page
PhD Dissertation Approval Page
make sounds magical but I have no Linux machine
Given the magical / mystique powers and features of the make process, I personally recommend using it and using it on a Linux machine. As long as one has a moderately modern computer (desktop and/or laptop), members of the pretty active and lesser known Linux Users’ Group of Michigan Tech can/will help out – with installation, getting started and/or troubleshooting. These geeky nerds (or nerdy geeks) meet every Thursday in Fisher/Rekhi Hall and conduct Install-A-Thon twice a year in MUB to spread the Linux/Open Source awareness – one may want to use such opportunities.
I don’t belong to Michigan Tech but can I still use it?
Style files and template files distributed are quite generic – with a bit of understanding, patience and effort, these can be very easily modified to meet specific requirements of any other university / institution.
If I use this template, will MTU Grad School accept my thesis/dissertation?
Using this template is NOT a substitute for proper learning of LaTeX. And, availability of these templates does NOT necessarily guarantee that the Grad School will approve your thesis / dissertation prepared using them. The Graduate School reserves every right to request changes in the future that are not covered by these templates. If you can post such recommendations/changes as comments, I will be more than happy to incorporate them in the style files and template files.
What if something doesn’t work right?
Style files and template files are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but they come with no warranty. If you can understand the structure and syntax of these files, feel free to edit them and make them suitable for your needs. However, if your programming skills/understanding is limited, limited to extensive help is available. One can post their questions, comments and/or concerns in the Comment Form below and follow responses from me or other users. If it’s something that can be afforded within my limited time/resources, I may even meet up some place to help you out.
Wish I had taken ur advice and learnt something about LaTeX earlier..Despite all your claims of how easy laTeX is, I think for uninitiated people like me, MS Word works because it is “user-friendly”..I tend to run away miles from anything that needs a command..
Point 3 in ur disclaimer, “that does not mean I do not dislike and/or hate people etc. etc.”..double negative means u do actually dislike people who use the “other option” uh?
I’m sure this post is extremely helpful, u’ve made many a nearing-graduation students’ lives easier..Keep up the good work!
@Soumya,
Thanks for pointing out that grave mistake – possible result of burning midnight electrons but that’s still no excuse not to read it carefully. Have corrected it – the intended meaning was that I do not dislike and/or hate people who used MS Word.
LaTeX does not necessarily involve working at the command line – things have gotten easier with the advent / introduction of many a user-friendly interfaces, even in Linux/Mac, one does not have to know the commands and things are as simple as push of a button.
Hello Bro:
You save me alot of efforts & times! I will let you know if there’s any bugs or problems.
This is a nice piece of work, my computer GURU!
Hey Gowtham, thanks for the effort you put into this. I’m going to try to incorporate my thesis into this format. Right now I’ve been writing chapters into separate word files. I don’t have much experience with Latex although I have managed to install it onto a flash drive which I’m attempting to use as a mobile thesis writing center. I’m also trying to use it in windows using Miktex and so far it is looking good although I haven’t played much with it. Since you appear to be knowledgable about TeX I might come to you if I run into some formatting issues. I hear diagrams are a pain in the butt with TeX.
-Ben
@Ben U,
About diagrams (or floats in general) in TeX/LaTeX, it’s still a pain if one uses the default settings. For example, LaTeX does not like to reserve/allocate more than 70% of text width for such floats and doesn’t like to put several of them in the same page. The style files I wrote take care of these things – at least to the extent that LaTeX is forced to allocate 90% of text width for floats and allow upto 50 floats per page.
Buzz me when/if you have some problems. We can work them out!
Compilation time is more than 2 minutes which is very unusual, for the references to appear then you do it twice or thrice which will further increase the compilation time. I am not sure whether psfig.sty comes along with all the standard 2e distribution .I am assuming- one of the purposes of makefile is to erase the .log ,.toc and .aux files. It doesn’t seem to be doing that. If it can do that , would be of great help.
Biju
@Biju,
Compilation time usually depends on the size of the document as well as the size of graphics being included to generate PostScript and/or PDF versions of the thesis/dissertation. If the command, make, did not clean up the *.toc, *.aux and *.log (and several others as well) files, I suspect that the make process terminated with some error.
One can get psfig.sty from CTAN website and place it in the same folder (under MTUDocumentation, along with MTU[MS/PhD]Thesis.sty) and things should work.
Please do let me know if it still does not work the way it should – we can make it work.
I guess I should have waited until you were ready to graduate before I wrote my diss. I ended up putting together a patchwork of random sty files and other assorted nonsense to make LaTeX work for my thesis.
Please seriously consider submitting / archiving this package with the people down in the graduate office. I specifically asked them (and the publisher) if such a template were available with negative results.
You’re doing a great thing here, Gowtham.
@Mike,
But for you getting me started on this during the Christmas of 2002, I would still be using MS Word or something like that. I have sent the link (to this entry) to Grad School as well as the Graduate Student Council but so far it hasn’t been forwarded the students list – guess it’s under some sort of review by the concerned people, although it’s being circulated through LaTeX-minded faculty from CS, Math & Physics departments.
before compilation looks as great as the compiled version. source code is order of magnitude more elegant than my botched up (also pirated in parts) version of .sty files
@Note2Self (and others):
Please note that things may not always work the way they should, if one uses these files with some other third party programs. For e.g., if using kile on Linux, Biju (my friend) experienced some issues.
if you can add \package{rotating} would be better for figures and tables.
Gowtham, great work! This would surely save atleast a week of my time.
Gowtham, very useful. Great work. If the left margin on the odd and even pages are different, that would be better for binding.
@LXK,
One of my friends, Jacob Fugal, sent me this information and I hope it does what you are looking for:
“I got the double sided thing to work to my satisfaction. It was pretty darn easy. I used the \documentclass[twoside]{report} line to make it double sided. I used the package \usepackage{nextpage} to get access to the \cleartooddpage[\thispagestyle{empty}] command that can ensure that the next chapter or section starts on an odd page, and if a blank page is necessary, it makes it blank of page headers or page numbers. So that’s how I’m doing it. The \setlength{oddsidemargin . . .} and \setlength{evensidemargin . . } commands remain as you set them in MTUPhDThesis.sty.”
@Note2Myself (and other users):
Style files, MyThesis.tex and Acknowledgments.tex have been modified to meet the standards prescribed by Michigan Tech Graduate School. Thanks to Dr. Debra Charlesworth and Jin Sun for pointing them out.
I’ve found your blog very interesting & informative … great work..
@Note2Self (and other users):
Appendix.tex has been modified to meet standards prescribed by Michigan Tech Graduate School. Thanks to dear friend Lin Pan for pointing them out.
Hellllp!
I need to submit an abstract by this wednesday and am using LaTex…why is this command: {\bf Eddy Covariance Measurements Of CO$_{2}$ Fluxes Above Lake Superior} clumping the first part of the title together and then does not change the last part (”Fluxes Above Lake Superior}”) of the title into bold??? can anyone help me?
@Jennifer:
Could you please provide some more details?
– type of the document you are using: Report, article, etc. ?
– style you are using: journal/conference specific or generic ?
You might want to try this and see if it helps:
\textbf{Eddy Covariance Measurements Of CO$_{2}$ Fluxes Above Lake Superior}
First, thanks so much for this page! And a question. Do I need first to download a bunch of .sty files to make this thing work? And if so, is there a way to download just one zip file with all of them instead of getting one by one from CTAN website?
@Kat:
Glad you like it and find it useful
Most of the .sty files needed are usually included in most LaTeX installations. One of them, an uncommon one, is included along with the template files. If you can let me know the details (the Operating System and the type of LaTeX distribution you have), I can give you more appropriate information.
If you have any questions and/or need further information, please do not hesitate to send me an email. I will try to answer them as soon as possible.
hey gowtham, i’ve come across your template lately, and it works great…actually, the only missing part is the headings, can you please make any suggestion? i’ve tried \usepackage{fancyhdr}, and eventhough i change the \pagestyle, there i no header on my pdf file. Thank you very much, sorry for my english…
calvin
hi gowtham
thanks for ur file…pls give some gyaan on how to use fancyhdr to get headings
something you might meet if you use this template.
1,latex might say it can not find the ‘psfig.sty’ class file. You can substitute the \usepackage{psfig} with \usepackage{graphics}. psfig package is kinda obsolete. graphics takes care of the job of psfig.
2,if you cite long url in your reference. You might find it does not break line. So you have a overfull line which looks ugly. The way out is substitute the \usepackage{url} with \usepackage{breakurl}. Rember to put it after \usepackage{hyperref}.
Thanks a ton Gowtham.
I started to use the template and ran into errors right away (my habit).
Well, Texnic (latex editor)was not able to install psfig directly and flashed an error.In order to fix this,you will have to download psfig package from CTAN website and place .sty/.tex file in folders as the other .sty/.tex files.
Secondly, there is an upgraded version of subfigure from CTAN you might want to use , for this case also you will have place files in respective folders. Be sure to include usepackage in preamble.
How can i edit the spacing between figures and line spacing in the entire file, table of contents and list of figures?
I am wanting to squeeze the thesis a bit, it getting too long any suggestions???
@Himanshu:
If you take a look through MTUPhDThesis.sty [or the MS equivalent], you will see a section called % Customizing Captions (Figures, Tables, etc). Each of the option used there is commented to explain what it means and you can edit them to meet your spacing requirements. Also, if you scroll down a bit in the same sty file, you will see a section called % Double Spaced Document – which defines the double line spacing (default). Change that to a suitable number as well.
Hope this helps!
I tried your suggestions on spacing, but they didn’t seem to work.
I played around with setstretch definition and it works.
But this still leaves me with problems. The TOC,LOF and LOT are all still in double spacing.
How do I edit the commands to get the right output?
Also the spacing of figures doesn’t seem to work.
I also want to center all the headings in the document not the subsection headings but the chapter, contents etc .
I looked up on internet and was lost.Please can you help me with this.
Thanks ..
I found sgowtham.net very informative. The article is professionally written and I feel like the author knows the subject very well. sgowtham.net keep it that way.
Gowtham
I’m getting a latex error
file ‘floatflt.sty’ not found.
where can i find it?
thanks
Dawdon
Dawdon,
Check here please:
http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/floatflt/