Auburn University Graduate School Dissertation/Thesis Template

This repository provides a template for writing a dissertation or thesis in the format required by the Auburn University Graduate School. Best efforts have been made to ensure the template complies with digital accessibility requirements.

Requirements

This template requires an up-to-date TeX installation (minimum: TeX Live 2025). The compiler must be LuaLaTeX, and the bibliography backend must be biber.

Getting started

Download this template from GitHub as a ZIP file, then choose whether you would like to write your dissertation or thesis on Overleaf or locally on your computer. Auburn University currently provides access to Overleaf premium for all students, faculty, and staff, so directions to get started there are:

1. Create a New project then choose to Upload project with the ZIP file you downloaded.
2. Open Settings (File > Settings or gear icon in lower left corner), go to the Compiler tab, then select LuaLaTeX from the list of compilers. Ensure the TeX Live version is set to the most current option.
3. Open thesis.tex in your Overleaf project, and click Recompile to generate a PDF.
4. Configure your document.
5. Fill in your front matter.
6. Write your content.
7. Defend and graduate!

Tip

If you are working locally on your computer, ensure you have installed a current version of TeX Live and that you have set the compilers correctly. The comment lines at the top of thesis.tex are hints for some editors to use lualatex and biber.

Configuration

The authesis class provides options for configuring your document, which you can specify when it is loaded:

\documentclass[options]{authesis}

The options that can be added as a comma-separated list are:

• thesis: format the front matter for a thesis rather than a dissertation.
• nocopyright: disable the copyright notice on the title page.
• ragged: use ragged right edge, rather than justified, text. Ragged text may may be better for accessibility.

You should then ensure you have loaded and configured the packages you need for writing your document. There are a couple things you need to be aware of to e

• You must use unicode-math if you are using math.
• Different graphics packages (such as tikz and pgfplots can also be used), but make sure you are using accessible colors.
• You can change the bibliography style to one appropriate to your discipline using the style option to biblatex.

If you would like to use other packages, you must make sure it is compatible with tagging. You can check the status of a large number of packages through the LaTeX Tagging Project.

Tip

The fontsetup package can slow down compilation considerably. Comment out the font commands while you are drafting to speedup your workflow.

Front matter

The front matter is the preliminary pages of the dissertation or thesis, including the title page, abstract, disclosure statements, acknowledgements, and lists of contents.

The title page is automatically generated for you. You will need to fill in:

• \title: the title of your dissertation or thesis.
• \degreetype: name of your degree, if different from Doctor of Philosophy (dissertation) or Master of Science (thesis).
• \date: your graduation date. Check the academic calendar for your semester.
• \keywords: up to 6 keywords in a comma- and space-separated list (optional).
• \committee: ordered list of your committee members. Each \committeemember should be specified on a separate line with their title. Put your Chair and co-Chair (if any) first and indicate them as such.

You are also required to provide an abstract, artificial intelligence (AI) use disclosure statement, and digital accessibility disclosure statement. Templates for the disclosure statements are provided in the template following Graduate School guidance. An acknowledgments section is optional but traditional.

The following lists of contents are the final component of the front matter:

1. \tableofcontents: List of front matter, chapters, and appendices up to the section depth (required).
2. \listoftables: List of all tables (required if tables are used).
3. \listoffigures: List of all figures (required if figures are used).
4. List of abbrevations of symbols: not currently supported by template.

You should comment out the \listoftables and \listoffigures if they are not needed for your document.

Writing the document

The contents of the dissertation or thesis are organized into chapters. The chapters are followed by a complete list of references. There may then be one or more appendices.

A suggested file structure is provided with this template. You create a .tex file for each chapter or appendix in the appropriate directory, then use \input to include that file in the main document. When using figures, create a directory so you can keep your .tex file and figures together; see Chapter 2 for an example.

Tip

You can set the \graphicspath (relative to the root of the project) at the start of a .tex file so that graphics can be included relative to the chapter directory. Make sure to do this for each chapter if you use it!

You may find it helpful to prepend chapter or appendix numbers to labels in your .tex files to avoid conflicts between chapters, especially if some of your chapters were published as articles. For example:

\label{ch1:eq:msd}
\label{appB:fig:diffusion}

References will be placed in brackets where they appear, so may sure you put your \cite commands in the right place. For example:

Einstein's foundational work on Brownian motion began with a paper in
1905 \cite{einstein:1905} that is part of a collection of papers published as a
book \cite{einstein:1926, einstein:1956}.

Example chapters are provided to illustrate different concepts and TeX commands, so searching this is a good starting point if you are unsure how to write something. Stylewise, be sure to follow the conventions of your discipline!

Best practices for digital accessibility

• Use chapters, sections, and subsections to organize text.

• Avoid placement specifiers for figures and tables.

• Provide alternative text for all figures. An example template for a figure is:

  \begin{figure}
    \centering
    \includegraphics[alt={Alt text}]{image}
    \caption{Caption}
    \label{fig:image}
  \end{figure}

• Specify the headers in your tables using \tagpdfsetup. An example for a table where the first row is the header:

  \begin{table}
    \centering
    \caption{Caption}
    \tagpdfsetup{table/header-rows={1}}
    \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
        \hline
        \textbf{Header 1} & \textbf{Header 2} \\
        \hline
        Data 1 & Data 2 \\
        \hline
    \end{tabular}
  \end{table}

  If you also have header columns, you can specify them like:

  \tagpdfsetup{table/header-columns={1},table/header-rows={1}}

  Use multirow and multicolumn layouts in tables with caution. It may be possible to use the multirow package if you load array first.

License and credits

This template is made available under an MIT License. It was adapted from uiucthesis under its license:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Graduate College

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copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
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