Graduate School Newsblog

Category: Tutorials and Help

Tutorials about online processes and software students use.

How to review a dissertation, thesis, or report

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Beginning in fall 2021, faculty advisors will be asked to review and approve dissertations, theses, and reports in Digital Commons. This will replace the Approval form, and will allow faculty to see the work their student has submitted and be notified when it is published. This process is similar to reviewing a journal article.

When your student submits their work to Digital Commons, the Graduate School will assign the work to the primary advisor to review. This is a manual process that will generally be completed on business days from 8am-5pm. You will receive an email requesting you review the submission – click on the link in your email. The email will be from “Michigan Tech Graduate Publications” and “@dcmtu.bepress.com”.

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Degree completion timeline on MyMichiganTech

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Graduate students can now see a personalized list of items they need to complete for each graduate degree on MyMichiganTech. A full description of items needed to complete each degree along with details about when, how, and why to complete them is found on the Graduate School’s web site.

Students can access their personalized list by:

  1. Logging into MyMichiganTech using their Michigan Tech ID and password
    • For example, if your email is blizzard@mtu.edu, you would log in with “blizzard” as your ID along with the same password used to check email
  2. Clicking on the “Current Students” link in the menu bar across the top of the page
    • The “Student Checklist” box in the left column will show items that are due now or recently completed
    • More help on accessing MyMichiganTech is found in our previous tutorial

For detailed information about the degrees you are seeking, look for the “Degree Completion Timeline” section in the center “My Status” column:

Screen shot of the Current Students section of MyMichiganTech that links to the Degree Completion Timeline.
The Degree completion timeline section in the My Status area.
  • The question mark icon will display a pop-up window with helpful information and links
  • If links to any of the forms aren’t working, the helpful link will direct you to technical information
  • Click on the “your degree completion timeline” link to display a new window described in the screenshots below
  • The “timeline details” link will take you to more information on the Graduate School’s web site
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Check if your Dissertation, Thesis or Report is Complete

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Students can check whether their dissertation, thesis, or report submission is complete on MyMichiganTech.  Additional details about the submission process can be found online for dissertations, theses, and reports.

First, log into MyMichiganTech using your Michigan Tech ID and password and click on the “Current Students” tab.

  • For example, if your email is blizzard@mtu.edu, you would log in with “blizzard” as your ID along with the same password used to check email
  • More help on accessing MyMichiganTech is found in our previous tutorial

In the center column, labeled “My Status,” find the Degree Completion Timeline section.  Click on the hyperlink “your degree completion timeline” – boxed in red below.

Screen shot of the Current Student tab on MyMichiganTech showing where you can find the Degree Completion Timeline.
Click on “your degree completion timeline” to see items required for each degree you are seeking.
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Reviewing a scheduling request for a final oral examination

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Effective spring 2021, students will schedule their final oral examination (“defense”) by submitting information about their dissertation, thesis, or report and defense to MyMichiganTech.

When a defense request is submitted by the student, the committee will be notified of the details and the advisor will also be notified to review the request in Workflow. If the advisor is missing the appropriate roles to review the workflow, the Graduate School will be notified immediately and will initiate updating the faculty record. Banner access for advisors is described on our web page. Please contact the Graduate School if there are any technical issues.

The advisor will log into Banner Workflow and select the scheduling request to review from their worklist. It is expected that faculty will review these requests within two business days.

Advisors will review the information provided by the student.

A portion of the form to show the scheduling information submitted by the student for the defense.

After reviewing the information, select “Approve” or “Reject” at the bottom of the page.

At the bottom of the scheduling request, select “Approve” or “Reject”

Return to the top of the form and select “Complete” to save the approval decision.

At the top of the form, select “Complete” to save the approval decision.

The committee, advisor, and student will be notified of the advisor’s decision. If the decision is to approve the defense scheduling, the graduate program director and assistant will also be notified. Committee members who are not Michigan Tech employees may not be notified; please confirm details with them individually.

If the committee does not receive the dissertation, thesis, or report with sufficient time for review prior to the defense, the advisor may request that the defense be rescheduled. Please contact the Graduate School to reschedule the defense.

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Scheduling a final oral examination

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A final oral examination (“defense”) is a milestone for students completing a dissertation, thesis, or report. To schedule a defense, students must log into MyMichiganTech and navigate to the Current Students tab.

In the “Dissertation, Thesis, or Report” area in the center column, students will see a link to schedule their final oral examination. If this section is blank, please contact the Graduate School for assistance.

A link to schedule a final oral examination is on the Dissertation, Thesis, or Report status area.

Please review the information at the top of the form. If there are any errors, please contact the Graduate School for assistance. Screenshots are very helpful.

Please complete the form with the following information:

  • The title of the dissertation, thesis, or report (55 characters per line; 4 lines maximum)
  • The date of the defense (must be at least two weeks into the future)
  • Start time of the defense
  • Building (select “Virtual defense – online only” if there isn’t a physical location)
  • Room (only required if there is a physical location)
  • URL for virtual attendance – 60 character limit – be sure your entire URL is visible
    • Required for virtual defenses, optional for physical defenses
    • Passwords are not allowed as defenses must be public
    • Waiting rooms are recommended (Zoom waiting room support)

Click “Submit” when you have completed entering the information. A confirmation page will appear.

Confirmation page once a final oral examination scheduling request has been submitted.

The student, committee, and advisor will receive a confirmation email with the information provided by the student. The student should ensure that the required items listed in the email have been completed. Committee members who are not Michigan Tech employees may not be notified; please confirm details with them individually.

The advisor will receive an email from the Graduate School and can approve or reject the request online. All committee members with a Michigan Tech email address and the student will be notified of the decision. Committee members who are not Michigan Tech employees may not be notified; please confirm details with them individually. If the defense request is approved, the graduate program director and assistant will also be notified.

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Embedding fonts in Microsoft Word

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Embedding fonts in a dissertation or thesis is a requirement for ProQuest and the Graduate School.  We recommend using Adobe Acrobat to embed fonts for files created in Microsoft Word.  If you do not have access to Adobe Acrobat, this alternative method will allow you to embed fonts directly from Microsoft Word.

Step 1. Click the file tab at the top of the page and select the “Options” menu from the bottom left.

Screen shot showing how to navigate to Word Options.
Screen shot showing how to navigate to Word Options.

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Using the Redaction Tool in Adobe Acrobat Pro

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One of the requirements for a Thesis, Dissertation, or Report to pass our formatting checks to make sure that all signatures in your document are properly obscured to protect the identity of the signer.  To help you figure this out, we’ve created a step by step blog post on how you can use the Redact tool in Adobe Acrobat Pro to remove signatures.

 

To begin, you will need to open your document or the letter which you need to redact a signature from in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Make sure that you are using Acrobat Pro as the redaction tool is not available in Adobe Reader.

Example
We will use this example letter to guide you through the redaction process.

 

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Checking Your Margins Using Double-Side Formatting

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Welcome back to the Michigan Tech Graduate School Newsblog. Since Thesis, Dissertation, and Report writing season is in full swing now we thought it might be helpful to give you a brief reminder on how you can check your margins before submitting your document to the Graduate School.

There are two ways described in “The Guide” to format your dissertation, thesis, or report: Single Side and Double Side formatting. In the post below we will walk you through how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro to check your margins in a Double Side formatted document. If you’re using Single Side formatting, click here to access our previous post on that topic.!

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Checking Your Margins Using Single Side Formatting

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Welcome back to the Michigan Tech Graduate School Newsblog. Since Thesis, Dissertation, and Report writing season is in full swing now we thought it might be helpful to give you a brief reminder on how you can check your margins before submitting your document to the Graduate School.

There are two ways described in “The Guide” to format your dissertation, thesis, or report: Single Side and Double Side formatting. In the post below we will walk you through how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro to check your margins in a Single Side formatted document. If you’re using Double Side formatting, check out our post on that here!

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Updating Your Expected Graduation Term

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Did you know that MyMichiganTech now allows you to update your expected Graduation Term with the Graduate School? It’s quick and easy to do, and by doing so your MyMichiganTech checklist will more accurately reflect what you need to do this semester.

Login to MyMichiganTech and Access the Current Students Tab

The first step to completing this task is to login to MyMichiganTech and navigate to the Current Students page. If you’re having trouble doing this, or you are new to MyMichiganTech, you may find our blog post on navigating MyMichiganTech helpful. This post can be found here.

Login page for MyMichiganTech.
Login page for MyMichiganTech.

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