This is especially worth remembering in the life sciences, where faculty expertise is spread among many different departments and colleges. As always, the honors adviser in the intended area of honors is the gatekeeper for whether a given thesis topic and supervisor are acceptable.
The thesis proposal does not require a timetable, but you and your supervisor should have a clear idea of how much you should accomplish on a monthly basis all the way through completion. Not all of those monthly benchmarks will be actual written work; for many Schreyer Scholars the write-up will not come until toward the end.
If you fall behind during the earlier part of the thesis timeline, it will be difficult if not impossible to make up that ground later.
You should take proactive steps against procrastination by making yourself accountable to someone other than yourself. Scheduling regular meetings or e-mailing regular updates with your thesis supervisor — even if you are working in the same lab routinely — is the best way to do that. You should also regularly update your thesis honors adviser.
Think ahead, preferably well before the time of your thesis proposal, about what your thesis work will mean for your fourth-year schedule.
There are many reasons to plan to include the summer between third and fourth year in your research timeline: those mentioned above, plus the benefit of devoting yourself full-time to the thesis, whether it is in a lab on campus or in the field. Funding opportunities for full-time summer thesis research include Schreyer Honors College grants , the Erickson Undergraduate Education Discovery Grant , and funding via your thesis supervisor especially in the sciences and engineering.
In addition to this guide, many departments and colleges have thesis guides with important information about their deadlines and expectations. If you do not see your college or department listed, consult with your honors adviser.
The formatting requirements in this guide apply to all Schreyer Honors theses. Please follow the thesis templates provided below:. Reduced type may be used within tables, figures, and appendices, but font size should be at least point in size and must be completely legible. The majority of your thesis document should be in black font, however, color is permissible in figures, tables, links, etc.
Begin each section on a new page. Do the same with each element of the front matter, the reference section, and the appendix. Try to avoid typing a heading near the bottom of a page unless there is room for at least two lines of text following the heading.
Instead you should simply leave a little extra space on the page and begin the heading on the next page. If you wish you use a "display" page a page that shows only the chapter title at the beginning of chapters or appendices, be sure to do so consistently and to count the display page when numbering the pages. Excluding the title page and signatory page, every page in the document, including those with tables and figures, must be counted.
Use lower case Roman numerals for the front matter and Arabic numbers for the text. The text or body of the thesis must begin on page 1. Follow the template provided at the top of this section. Use the template provided as a pattern for creating your title page. Be sure all faculty members are identified by their correct professional titles. Check with the department for current information.
Do not use such designations as "PhD" or "Dr. Please submit your final thesis to your Thesis Supervisor and Honors Adviser at least two weeks prior to the final submission due date to allow them ample time for review and suggested changes. Also, please communicate with your professors to find out their schedule and preferred amount of time to review your thesis.
Once your thesis is submitted, your committee will review the thesis one last time before giving their final approval. A minimum of two approvals is required on each thesis. If one of the approvers has a dual role e. Thesis Supervisor and Honors Adviser , then list both roles under the professional title. Do not list the same person twice. If the sharing of roles leaves you with fewer than the required number of approvals, an additional approver must be added Faculty Reader.
Be sure to identify all faculty by their correct professional titles. This is a one-paragraph summary of the content of your thesis that identifies concisely the content of the thesis manuscript and important results of your project. Some students like to think of it as an advertisement — i. Keep it short and include the most interesting points.
There is no restriction on the length of the abstract, but it is usually no longer than one page. The table of contents is essentially a topic outline of the thesis and it is compiled by listing the headings in the thesis. You may choose to include first-level headings, first- and second-levels, or all levels. Keep in mind there usually is no index in a thesis, and thus a fairly detailed table of contents can serve as a useful guide for the reader. The table of contents must appear immediately after the abstract and should not list the abstract, the table of contents itself, or the vita.
Be sure the headings listed in the table of contents match word-for-word the headings in the text. Double check to be sure the page numbers are shown. In listing appendices, indicate the title of each appendix. If using display pages, the number of the display page should appear in the table of contents. An honors thesis manuscript should replicate the appearance of professional writing in your discipline.
Include the elements of a formal piece of academic work accordingly. For specific questions on organization or labeling, check with your thesis supervisor to see if there is a style guide you should use.
Acknowledgements are not a required component of an honors thesis, but if you want to thank particular colleagues, faculty, librarians, archivists, interviewees, and advisers, here's the place to do it. You should include an acknowledgements page if you received a grant from the University or an outside agency that supported your research. A table is a columnar arrangement of information, often numbers, organized to save space and convey relationships at a glance.
A rule of thumb to use in deciding whether given materials are tables or figures is that tables can be typed, but figures must be drawn. A figure is a graphic illustration such as a chart, graph, diagram, map, or photograph. Please be sure to insert your table or figure. Do not copy and paste. Once the figure or table is inserted, you right click on it to apply the appropriate label.
Afterwards, return to the list of tables or list of figures page, right click on the list, and "update table entire table " and the page will automatically hyperlink. Each table and each figure in the text must have a number and caption.
Number them consecutively throughout, beginning with 1, or by chapter using a decimal system. Place a table or figure immediately after the first mention of it in the text — on the same page if there is room, or on the following page. Tables or figures of peripheral importance to the text may be placed in an appendix. Tables and figures must be referred to in the text by number, not by a phrase such as "the following table. Style Guides These parts of the thesis will vary in format depending on the style guide you are following.
Whichever style you are using, stick to the rules and be consistent. A thesis must include a bibliography or reference section listing all works that are referred to in the text, and in some cases other works also consulted in the course of research and writing.
This section may either precede or follow the appendices if any , or may appear at the end of each chapter. Usually a single section is more convenient and useful for both author and reader. For this reason, you will need to follow a scholarly style manual in your field or perhaps a recent issue of a leading journal as a guide in compiling this section of the thesis. Material that is pertinent but is somewhat tangential or very detailed raw data, procedural explanations, etc.
If there is only one appendix, call it simply Appendix, not Appendix A. This is the online catalog of materials owned by Penn State Libraries. All formats books, journals, audiovisuals, maps, recordings, etc.
Circulation status for individual items is also provided. Coverage: Presently contains about 7 million records. Updates: Continuous up-to-the-minute as new records are added. Departments have changed names over the years, see this Index of previous and current department names for older information.
Subjects: Format. Tags: dissertations , theses. All doctoral dissertations and master's theses must be submitted electronically.
For more information on electronic theses and dissertations eTDs , visit the eTD website. The Word documents are designed to be used specifically with screen reader technology.
Please use the PDF versions of these forms unless you require the use of screen reader technology. You may need to download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat reader free to view and print the PDF documents.
The templates for Thesis and Dissertations are available in OneDrive. Please use the "Download" option from this page to download the required template s to use as your local working document. There is no need to open the file in your browser or request any additional access to the files.
The Statistical Consulting Center gives advice to graduate students working on thesis research. Information about the Graduate School's commencement ceremony. Questions about theses, dissertations, or Graduate School commencement should be directed to:.
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