Rutgers Thesis Template

A latex template formatted for Rutgers thesis/dissertations and their proposals.

This project is not affiliated with Rutgers.

What you get

This repository provides a template for a proposal, master's thesis, and doctoral dissertation in one go. For an example of thesis/dissertation output, please look at main.pdf. For an example of the proposal, please look at main_Proposal.pdf.

How to use

Begin by downloading this folder and it's contents and then unzipping it. The following will list the changes you will need to make to main.tex to use this template for your own thesis.

RUTitle options

The import of RUTitle (line 33) takes several options which will adjust the document as appropriate for terminology and format.

To choose the field of engineering, replace CBE with any of the following:

Code	Department
CBE	Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
AE	Aerospace Engineering
BME	Biomedical Engineering
CEE	Civil and Environmental Engineering
ECE	Electrical and Computer Engineering
EnvE	Environmental Engineering
ISE	Industrial and Systems Engineering
MSE	Materials Science and Engineering
MAE	Mechincal Engineering

To distinguish between a PhD dissertation and a Master Thesis, replace PhD with

Code	Document Type
PhD	Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation
MS	Master of Science Thesis
ME	Master of Engineering Thesis

If this is your proposal, you may include proposal as a third option.

Some examples:

• A masters student in the ECE department preparing their thesis will have \usepackage[ECE,ME]{RuTitle}

• A BME doctoral student preparing their proposal will have \usepackage[BME,PhD,proposal]{RuTitle}

Author details section

1. (Line 60) Replace the contents of \author with your name.
2. (Line 61) Replace the contents of \title with the title.
3. (Line 62) Replace the contents of \graduationDate with your intended graudation date (October, January, or May and year) or the month and year of your proposal defense is.
4. (Line 63) Replace the contents of \supervisor with your professor's name. If you are co-advised, write both as XXX and YYYY.

Copyright page

If you are preparing a thesis or dissertation, you include a copyright page using the command \copyrightPage. If you are preparing your proposal you must delete the command, line 106, from the template.

Abstract

Enter your abstract into an abstract environment.

The way you use it is:

\begin{abstract}
 Here is a summary of my work...
\end{abstract}

You may type directly into the environment or write it in another .tex file and incorporate it using \input. Don't use include.

This section is always after the title page.

Acknowledgements

If you would like to make a larger acknowledgement, you may use the acknowledgements environment. The way you use it is:

\begin{acknowledgements}
 I would like to thank...
\end{acknowledgements}

This section is always after the abstract.

Dedication

If you would like to make a smaller dedication, you may use the \dedication{} command and enter your dedication between the {}.

I've seen this after the acknowledgements if there is both, but I don't know if there is any set order. Either way, this is after the abstract.

Main body content

I would recommend you make individual .tex files for your chapters and incorporate them into main.tex using \include{} commands. The template currently has some things written into the document, but that's only to show what the chapters look like.

Images, Tables, and Schemes

There is an example of an image and a table in the methods.tex file.

I have, for the benefit of other ChemEs, provided an example of a scheme environment and already included it into the TOC. You may remove this by deleting lines 152-156

I don't know if the list of schemes is technically allowed in the dissertation style, we'll find out in a year or so.

Bibliography

I leave this up to you in case you have a preference of BibLaTeX vs. BibTex. The guidelines state to "conform to generally accepted practice in the discipline," so it's on you to get the .bst and incorporate your bib file. I provide an example for the RSC citation style.

Sources

The information for the formatting is sourced from the Electronic Thesis and Disseration Style Guide from the Rutgers School of Graduate Studies. You can find that resource here: https://grad.rutgers.edu/academics/graduation/electronic-thesis-and-dissertation-style-guide

Limitations

• I made this from the standpoint of an engineer so I included the engineering degrees. If you are interested in using this template outside of engineering, let me know and I can incorporate your field for you.
• If you are co-advised, the abstract currently does not change to acknowledge there is more than one advisor. You can change the RUAbstract.sty file to add an s to Director on line 36.
• I'm testing this as I work on my thesis so errors may exist.
• It's on you to verify that the template is acceptable for your department.
• I am trying to make this cleaner by having a .cls instead of a bunch of .sty's, but realistically that's unlikely to happen at this point.
• It works on my machine ™️ ¯\(ツ)/¯ I'm using this with TexMaker 5.1.3 on Windows 10 with MikTeX as my backend. I can't promise I can help you figure out why it does/n't work for you, but if you post an issue I will try to help when I have time.

License

I am publishing this under the LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c. A copy may be seen here: https://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt.