University of Texas at Austin graduate thesis LaTeX style

The Digital Submission Requirement page describes the requirements for Masters and Ph.D. thesis submissions. Most utexas.edu URLs are fragile; if that link is dead, try searching for utexas graduate thesis style.

This style is available from CTAN as of 2018-09-13. Run tlmgr update --all to ensure your LaTeX distribution uses the latest version.

Instructions

1. Download the utexasthesis.cls (right click and "Save As...") file into your working directory
2. Replace your initial \documentclass{...} call with \documentclass{utexasthesis}
3. Fill in the required personal information by calling the following commands in your preamble (i.e., somewhere before \begin{document}):
   • \title{The Title of Your Dissertation or Treatise}
   • \author{Full Official Name}
     • This should match the "Name of Doctoral Candidate" field on your official "Request For Final Oral Examination" form.
   • \graduationdate{May}{2017}
   • \supervisor{Supervisor Name}
   • \cosupervisor{Cosupervisor Name}
     • % \cosupervisor{} is optional, unless you use the masters option (described below), in which case it's required and \othercommitteemembers{} is ignored.
   • \othercommitteemembers{Member's Name, Member's Name, Member's Name}
4. Supply \maketitle and the other commands and environments in the proper order.
5. Use \maketableofcontents instead of \tableofcontents
6. Use \makebibliography{yourbib} instead of \bibliography{yourbib} (and be sure to specify a style with \bibliographystyle{...}).

Alternatively, you can use the basic.tex (right click and "Save As...") example as a starting point, replacing the placeholder text with your own information. View the pdflatex render of basic.tex on GitHub at basic.pdf, or download.

Customizations

The formatting guide doesn't require a specific font face. The utexasthesis class doesn't set one, which leaves "Computer Modern Roman" as the default font family.

You can use any font supported by your LaTeX distribution; e.g., to use the Palatino font, as in the formatting guideline's examples:

\usepackage{palatino}

Or to use Times, along with a teletype font (which is used in URLs) that's more compact than Courier:

\usepackage{times}
\renewcommand*\ttdefault{cmvtt}

Options

The utexasthesis class can be customized with several optional arguments, which are supplied in the \documentclass{} call, e.g., \documentclass[masters]{utexasthesis}.

• masters: switch format to Masters thesis, which has the following effects:
  • The document type is set to "Thesis" instead of "Dissertation".
  • The degree is set to "Master of Arts" (M.A.) instead of "Doctor of Philosophy" (Ph.D.).
  • The signatures page is styled differently.
• copyright: adds a copyright page at the beginning of your thesis.
• Line spacing (defaults to onehalfspacing if omitted):
  • singlespacing: Use single-spacing throughout the document, which is prohibited by the formatting guidelines.
  • onehalfspacing: Use 1.5-spacing throughout the document.
  • doublespacing: Use double-spacing throughout the document.
• Font sizes (defaults to 12pt if omitted):
  • 10pt: Use 10 point font, which is not recommended by the formatting guidelines.
  • 11pt: Use 11 point font, which is not recommended by the formatting guidelines.
  • 12pt: Use 12 point font.
• draft: renders a compact version of your thesis. The layout does not comply with the graduate school requirements, but may be useful to print out drafts for review.
  • This option applies the usual draft class options to the underlying report class.
  • The copyright page is omitted even if the copyright option is used.
  • The signatures page is omitted.
  • The main title page is omitted.
  • Chapters do not trigger a page break.

All of these can be used in combination, separated by commas. The few options that have overlapping effects will give priority to the last-listed argument(s) in the listings above. E.g., \documentclass[masters,12pt,draft,11pt]{utexasthesis} will render the Masters thesis format in 12 point font, even though 11pt comes after 12pt in the list of options.

Packages

The following packages are imported by utexasthesis:

• geometry (to set paper size, layout dimensions, and margins)
• fontenc
• setspace (configurable via singlespacing / onehalfspacing / doublespacing option)
• indentfirst (to indent every paragraph, even at the beginning of chapters and sections)
• natbib
• tocloft
• tocbibind
• url
• hyperref
• doi (to hyperlink DOIs in bibliography)

F.A.Q.

• Q: How do I number subsubsections? E.g., Chap.Sec.Subsec.Subsubsec

  A: Set the secnumdepth and tocdepth counters:

  % number subsubsections
  \setcounter{secnumdepth}{3} % default: 2 (which only numbers up to subsections)
  % include subsubsections in table of contents
  \setcounter{tocdepth}{3} % default: 2

  See How to show subsections and subsubsections in TOC? for details.

License

The utexasthesis document class and related materials are CC0-licensed. This is similar to the Unlicense and WTFPL. This means I (Christopher Brown), have waived all copyright rights to this work, to the extent allowed by law.