Thesis and Dissertation Design Policy

Texas Woman’s University, since 2014, requires that all dissertations and theses be submitted to the Graduate School in electronic/digital format. While the University has gone to 100% Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) submission, some departments require students provide them with a printed bound copy. Students need to check with their department and/or Graduate School to determine if their department is one that requires a printed copy.

The Graduate School at Texas Woman’s University accepts ETDs in one of three design options:

• Traditional
• Article Submission
• Interactive/Embedded/Multimedia

Regardless of the layout selected by the student, with the approval of their major professor and committee, every ETD will be submitted, as a PDF, to the Graduate School by the deadlines posted on the Graduate School’s Webpage. Every ETD submission must also have embedded fonts in the main file. If the fonts are not embedded someone using a reader will not be able to read the document.

Traditional

This option works well for students in departments that require a print copy as well as those in departments that have gone to ETD submissions. The traditional option tends to be the one mostly commonly utilized. This design option strictly adheres to the format requirements of the Graduate School and the style manual selected by the Department or Committee Chair.

Article Submission

This option works well for students in departments that require a print copy as well as those in departments that have gone to ETD submissions.
This design option best accommodates those students who have submitted, will submit, and/or have had charters accepted for publications in journals. This layout adheres to the general format requirements of the Graduate School, the style manual selected by the Department or Committee Chair, with some modifications, also allows for the inclusion of chapters written in a journal format.

Interactive/Embedded/Multimedia

The Interactive/Embedded/Multimedia design option works best for those students in departments that have gone to ETD submissions. This option will be difficult to convert to print media for those in departments requiring a printed version of the final product.

Students who select the Interactive/Embedded/Multimedia design option, while still adhering to the general format required by the Graduate School, will be able to submit their dissertation/thesis as an embedded PDF. Embedded PDF’s, as well as any supplementary files that the student may include, can contain, for example: Audio and video clips, interactive files, datasets as well as some customized font formatting. The Graduate School, at this time, cannot accept files containing software applications, files exceeding size limitations (currently this is 4 GBs), or files designed to need webhosting.

A few examples of supported formats: Images Video Audio GIF (.gif), Apple Quick Time (.mov), AIF (.aif), JPEG (.jpeg), Microsoft Audio Video Interleaved (.avi), MIDI (.midi), MPEG (.mpg), and WAV (.wav).