Category Archives: School

Dissertation guidelines

(This is rewritten in Anthony language for my own clarification. If anyone else finds this useful than awesome!)

Dissertation guidelines via OGS:

  1. Deadline: April 15 for Spring
  2. Formatting rules:
    1. Letter Size, 8 ½ X 11 inch
    2. The left margin of each page must be 1 1/2 inches, and the top, right, and bottom margins 1 inch.
    3. paginate your manuscript; upper right hand corner and bottom center
      1. If your page numbers are at the bottom, leave two blank line spaces between the last line of text and the line on which the page number is placed.
      2. Whether they are at the top or the bottom, page numbers should appear just outside the 1-inch margins (.5 to .8 inches from the top or bottom edge of the page).
      3. Use lower-case Roman numerals for the front matter (which is all pages before the body of research), create section break and continue (beginning again with page “1”) with Arabic numerals for the remainder of the manuscript, including the text, illustrations, appendices and references.
    4. Your manuscript should be double-spaced and single-sided.
    5. References may be single-spaced with a double space between each reference. Indented quotations may also be single-spaced.
    6. Font size for your text should be 12 point; headings may be up to 14 point. Fonts for tables, figures, and appendices may range from 8 to 12 point.

Latex format

MS Word format

Steps for defense and graduation

The journey has begun and I’m preparing to graduate this semester. In order to do that I need to have my dissertation finalized and submitted by April 15, and have defended prior to that. Here is a list of things (straight from the Office of Graduate Studies) I need to do/complete:

  1. Program of Studies – for masters.
  2. Application for Candidacy
  3. Appt of dissertation committee
  4. Announcement of Exam – also included on there is the Report of Exam
  5. Manuscript prep:
    1. Information cover sheet
    2. Certificate of final form
    3. electronic ETD release
    4. email the forms to dwein@unm.edu
  6. Register for Lobovault
    1. email dwein to confirm Lobovault registration
  7. Complete Survey of Earned Doctorates
    1. forward email of completed survey to dwein
  8. Submit Dissertation via ProQuest
    1. need to create account

Everything else via Doug:

Transmitting your manuscript to the LoboVault repository When you have completed all of your required revisions and saved your complete manuscript, including Front Matter, as a single pdf file you are ready to transmit the final electronic manuscript to the LoboVault. Here are the steps you need to follow to transmit your file:

  1. Login at “My Account” at LoboVault repository website using the same username and password that you used for registration. The “Login” will change to “Logout”.
  2. Move the cursor above to the “Browse” section and click on the “Communities & Collections” link; in the center of the page, the first heading will be “UNM Academic & Scholarly Communications”.
  3. Scroll down to “Graduate Studies Community” and select the appropriate Doctoral Dissertations Community, Master of Fine Arts Community, or Master’s Theses Community.
  4. Scroll down to the designated departmental degree collection (e.g. Anthropology or English). Click on the appropriate collection button. The website that opens will be the site where your manuscript resides, so be sure to verify that you have selected the correct department.
  5. Find the link “submit a new item to this collection”. Clicking this link initiates the actual electronic submission of the manuscript. Follow the directions on each page. The first page has an “Item Submission” heading which will move you from Initial Questions through Six Steps (Describe, Describe, Upload, Review, License, and Complete). As you proceed, complete the open fields and click on the “Next” button to move to the next page.
  6. When you click on the “Complete” button at the end of this sequence, LoboVault will deliver your manuscript to the shadow archive administered by the OGS manuscript coordinator who completes the final review of your manuscript. Within three weeks after the degree requirement deadline, you will receive a letter acknowledging the approval of your manuscript and the partial fulfillment of the program requirement for the degree. The manuscript stays in the LoboVault shadow archive until the Registrar confers the final degree, at which time the OGS manuscript coordinator electronically moves the manuscript from the shadow archive to the LoboVault open-access repository and (for doctoral students) to the ProQuest-UMI repository.

Candidacy Forms Map

I’m basically making a “site” map so I can find the forms that I’ve been emailed and filled in, in case there are issues in the future, I can find them and pull them up again. Easily.

Here are the useful items:

  • AC_doctoral FORM-Salvagno.doc (My Documents on bioware) – this form is the most up to date form with my PhD credits moved to the Masters section (since they apply for both degrees) and 4 courses in the minor section (for the NSMS minor).
  • Email from ricoh, subject “Message from RNPEEED05,” date July 19 2012- contains the minor form signed but unfinished
  • Email from Alisa, subject “candidacy,” date July 18 2012 – contains information from OGS about minor and has form “AC_doctoral FORM-Salvagno Revision.doc” which moved a bunch of credits from the minor section to the PhD section. This will have to be moved back down in subsequent editions if it gets used.
  • Email from Heather and Alisa, subject “Minor Paperwork,” date July 17, 2012 – contains the minor form in .pdf (can’t save with fields filled in) and some conversations where I discover the Candidacy information never got submitted.
  • POS – Masters-Salvagno.doc (My Documents on bioware) – is the program of studies that I submitted for my Masters degree. Since I actually have the degree, this paperwork isn’t very useful anymore, but still worth noting where it is in case something goes down.

Application for Candidacy: The struggle continues…

There is almost no reason to write this post other than to document the fact that I am finalizing my paperwork for my PhD candidacy. Please don’t clap/cheer or congratulate me. There is quite a story about why I even need this post, but just know this is mostly for my own documentation. But if you are interested, here is the full story:

From Fall 2007-Spring 2010 I was an NSMS IGERT fellow. The NSMS IGERT created a degree program from the curriculum of the program. NSMS fellows could be either NSMS PhD students or students from outside the field. If they were from another department, those students would be eligible for a minor in NSMS. I fell into this category.

Unfortunately I didn’t complete the curriculum. There were 5 courses and due to time constraints I had to drop the last course. Doing so didn’t affect my Physics degree at all, but it did affect my eligibility for the NSMS minor.

Fast forward a short time later and I gave my candidacy presentation Fall 2010. With that came a bunch of annoying paperwork. But I got it done and presented and passed and the rest is history. Right?

Wrong!

I met with the NSMS program administrator last week to discuss my IGERT proposal. In a completely chance discussion, she mentioned to me that there was a recent rule change so that I would be eligible to receive the minor in NSMS. All I would need to do is attach a form to my candidacy paperwork and I’m in.

So I contacted the Physics admin to discuss the logistics and discovered that my candidacy paperwork never got filed. I’m not sure if it never was turned into the UNM Office of Graduate Studies (OGS), or if got lost, or what. I am sure that I filled it out and submitted it.

How you ask? Well last summer I submitted paperwork to receive an MS in Physics. The paperwork for that is identical to the application for candidacy, just with a different title. And I copy and pasted all the information from the candidacy form onto the master petition.

Regardless of what went down at my candidacy exam, some how there is no record of my application for candidacy being submitted and that is what I’m finalizing today. And since I document anything from this process in my open notebook, I can’t prove that the error was not my own. But now I am documenting it, so if there are any issues in the future I can point here and figure out what the issue is.

See, open notebook science works well for other things than just science.

And in case anyone is interested, here is a practice candidacy exam I created complete with audio: