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Dissertation/Thesis and Defense

General

  • Important Dates and Deadlines -- be sure of the deadline for the semester you plan to graduate.
  • To participate in commencement, you do not need to have defended and filed your thesis, but you need to be very close to doing so. You do have to submit the graduation application for that semester in order to be eligible for commencement.
  • If you have filed the application to graduate in a given semester, but do not complete the degree requirements that semester, then you just need to submit the graduation refile form for the next semester.
  • If you will defend and submit your thesis early in the semester, filing fee may be a logical approach. Check Grad Div's Graduate Policy and Procedures Handbook for more information.
  • Ph.D. Checklist
  • When you schedule your defense, ask our Physics Department Staff at physics@ucmerced.edu to send an email announcement to the department and add it to the department calendar. You can reserve a classroom or conference room via https://rooms.ucmerced.edu.
  • You can have a flyer created by filling out this form: https://naturalsciencesgrads.ucmerced.edu/form/request-defense-announcement. When the form is received at least 10 business days before your defense, department staff will order refreshments on your behalf.
    • A flyer will include a title, abstract, bio, and photo, and will be posted around the campus and campus monitors.
  • After submission of your dissertation, be sure to provide your advisor with the data that supports the results in your dissertation, in case any questions may arise later, or for use in preparation of further publications. This could be in the form of a Box folder or external hard drive, for example.
  • You are invited to join our alumni LinkedIn group.

Defense

  • The defense presentation is typically around 45 minutes, to be followed by public questions from attendees and then closed-door questions from the committee, within a time window around 2 hours.
  • Final Report for the PhD -- bring this for your committee members to sign, and then afterward get the Graduate Group Chair's signature. This can be done either on paper or with electronic signatures in a PDF.
  • Ph.D. Dissertation and Defense Rubric -- remind your committee chair to fill this out afterward. You will receive the results by email.
  • When you submit your final report and thesis to Graduate Division, you can request a degree conferral letter stating you have fulfilled all program requirements, if needed for a postdoc position or other future job.

As per the Graduation Division's Graduate Handbook:

C) Qualifying Examination and Dissertation Defense Modality: Qualifying examinations and dissertation defenses are expected to be held in person. The student/candidate and all in-residence committee members are required to attend the examination/defense in person. Committee member(s) not in residence are encouraged to join in person as well but may participate remotely with approval of the Committee Chair, who is required to be in person. The Committee Chair must notify the Graduate Division at least 14 days before the examination/defense of remote participation for any committee member(s) that will not attend the examination/defense in residence. Such notification should be made by email to gradservices@ucmerced.edu. Exceptions for students and in-residence committee members must be approved by the Graduate Dean. Such petitions should be submitted using Section E of the General Petition form.

Dissertation/Thesis

  • LaTeX template
  • If including text from journal articles you have published, check the journal policies about this: generally it is allowed but may require a special copyright statement.
  • If you are including collaborative and/or co-authored work, be sure to identify clearly your contributions vs. those of others. The contributions of others (such as your collaborators) should be mentioned only for context or comparison, and be clearly credited to the other researchers.
  • Previous dissertations from UC Merced on eScholarship, as examples
  • Your signature page on your dissertation should not include faculty members' signatures. The signature lines should be left blank. Only the signature page submitted to Grad Services should include your committee member's signatures.
  • Writing in LaTeX, you may find some places where the text (or images) goes beyond the right margin. Some approaches to fix this: https://latex.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11207. Grad Div will complain about this otherwise.
  • You can include your CV as a PDF rather than rewriting it in LaTeX, via \usepackage{pdfpages}, and then \includepdf[pages=-]{CV.pdf}.
  • Often text from the qualifying exam proposal can be a good starting point for the Introduction chapter.
  • Common LaTeX issues to keep in mind:
    • Units, chemical formulas, and non-variable subscripts or superscripts should be in Roman letters not italic; make this happen in math mode like this: MoS$_2$ or ${\rm MoS}_2$, or $200\ {\rm cm}^{-1}$.
    • Check that titles look ok in your references. Depending on the reference style you use, the titles may all be made lowercase. Words that are supposed to remain uppercase regardless of capitalization style can be "protected" like this: "{Raman} spectroscopy" or "{MoS}$_2$". Check also whether formatting like math notation has been rendering appropriately.
    • Quotation marks should be done like this, to get the correct curly quotes before and after: ``quote'' or `quote'.
    • Check for duplicated references.
    • Be sure to pay attention to any errors and warnings when compiling. If using Overleaf, these are marked as red or orange at the top of the page. Usually all errors are significant and can be resolved. Some warnings are unimportant and can remain.