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UTRGV-SMSS / Thesis-Template

Unofficial UTRGV Thesis Template
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Unofficial UTRGV Thesis Template

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This is a LaTeX thesis template that attempts to conform to the Thesis Guide published by the UTRGV Graduate College.

If you have a question, please submit your question as an issue here: https://github.com/UTRGV-SMSS/Thesis-Template/issues. You should also read through the issues listed there to see if they match the question you have.

Getting Started

To use this template, download as a zip file from Github. Optionally, you can upload this zip file to Overleaf to get started right away.

After unzipping you should see many files, but the most important files are the main.tex file and the UTRGV.cls file. The main formatting commands are defined in the UTRGV.cls file. However, it is likely that you will not need to modify or even look at the contents of this file.

To really get started, open the main.tex file and start editing. This file is mostly self-documenting. Look at the comments in this file for directions on how to produce the desired content and formatting of your thesis.

Apart from the commands documented in the main.tex file, try to use the regular LaTeX formatting commands. Avoid loading packages that change the layout of your document.

Help With LaTeX

The following are two video series on getting started with LaTeX: from Vincent Knight and from Grand Valley State

Here is a link on how to split your thesis up into several files: https://web.science.mq.edu.au/~rdale/resources/writingnotes/latexstruct.html

Common Issues

  1. Font is Not Times New Roman: When compiling with LaTeX (or pdfLaTeX) your paper will be typeset with a font that is almost identical to Times New Roman but is not actually named that. To typeset your paper with Times New Roman, change the compiler that your editor uses from LaTeX (or pdfLaTeX) to XeLaTeX.
  2. Figures Do Not Show Up: When compiling in draft mode, figures do not show and you will also see red labels on equations and figures. To have the figures show and the red labels disappear, change the \documentclass options from draft to final.
  3. Table of Contents is titled "Contents" instead of "TABLE OF CONTENTS” and need to change "Chapter I" to "CHAPTER I": This issue is most likely caused by the Babel package, which is probably not needed. If so, remove the line with “\usepackage{babel}”
  4. Compiling for PhD dissertation: To compile for a PhD dissertation, you can change the \documentclass options from masters to phd. Alternatively, you can use the following code in your main.tex file. 
    \degree{Doctor of Philosophy}
\degreeabbrev{(PhD)}
\docname{Dissertation}
  5. Compiling for a Master of Arts Thesis: To compile for a Master of Arts thesis use the following code in main.tex
\degree{Master of Arts}
\degreeabbrev{(MA)}
\docname{Thesis}

  1. Text Needs to be Aligned Left instead of Justified: Sometimes a reviewer will ask that the text of your thesis be Aligned Left (which is the default in Microsoft Word) instead of Justified (which is the default in LaTeX). To switch to Aligned Left, uncomment the line with \usepackage[document]{ragged2e} in main.tex to activate Aligned Left.

  2. Bibliography Requires Hanging Indentation: Sometimes a reviewer will ask that the entries of your Bibliography have hanging indentation after the first line. To enable this, add the lines below to the file main.tex before the beginning of the bibliography code. You can adjust the size of the indentation by changing 2em to a more suitable value.

    \makeatletter
\def\bibhanging{2em}
\let\old@biblabel\@biblabel
\def\@biblabel#1{\old@biblabel{#1}\kern\bibhanging}
\let\old@bibitem\bibitem
\def\bibitem#1{\old@bibitem{#1}\leavevmode\kern-\bibhanging}
\makeatother

  3. Want to Use Special Environments for Thereoms: If you want to use special environments for theroems, propositions, proofs, and other similar environments, add code similar to below to the file main.tex. See the documentation for the amsthm package for further customization.

    \usepackage{amsthm}
\newtheorem{prop}{Proposition}
\renewcommand{\theprop}{\thechapter{}.\arabic{prop}}

  4. Reviewer Asks to Modify Spacing: Sometimes a reviewer will ask you modify spacing in some part of the document. For example, if a reviewer asks you decrease the space between the lines in the copyright page, modify the file UTRGVthesis.cls by changing the line

    Copyright~\UTRGVField@Year~\UTRGVField@Author \\

    to something similar to

    Copyright~\UTRGVField@Year~\UTRGVField@Author \\[-1mm]

    where you will need to judge the length needed. Unfortunately, the changes asked by reviewers are unpredictable. Otherwise, this template would be modified to accommodate them.

  5. Captions are aligned to the left: The September 2021 revision of Thesis Guide states on page 15 that figures and tables should be left-aligned and not centered. The caption package is loaded in the class file to align the captions to the left to match the alignment of figures and tables.

  6. List of Figures and List of Tables must only contain the first sentence of Figure/Table caption: If your Figure(s) and/or Table(s) contain more than one sentences in its caption, only the first sentence must be included in the List of Figures and List of Tables. To do this, in your figure or table environment edit the \caption{} as follows.

\caption[<First sentence>]{Full caption.}

This will keep the Full caption in the Figure/Table but only add the first sentence to the LoF and LoT.

  1. Long Chapter names: Splitting long chapter names across multiple lines using newline commands also splits them in the corresponding TOC entry. To fix this use,

\chapter[<Chapter Name without newline characters>]{Chapter name with newline characters as needed}

This will ensure that the chapter name doesn't have any newline characters in the TOC but have them in the chapter title page as needed.

Authors

The author of this template is Guillermo Garza.