Vanderbilt PhD Thesis - Template

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Whenever you’re getting close to finishing your Ph.D., you will eventually have to start writing up your dissertation. There are many templates out there, but there has been one template passed around between Astronomy graduate students at Vanderbilt from generation to generation.

Now, it’s even easier to start writing your dissertation if you follow the following steps:

Steps to take to write your dissertation

The dissertation can be found at: Vanderbilt Astro PhD Template

This template is easy to use, and you only need to answer some questions.

Downloading Vanderbilt PhD Thesis

You first need to run:

cd /path/to/where/main/thesis/will/be/
pip install cookiecutter
cookiecutter https://github.com/VandyAstroML/Vanderbilt_Astro_PhD_Template

This will install the necessary packages and directories for the PhD Thesis.

Note

Make sure you cd into the correct path. Otherwise, you will be downloading the repository wherever.

Downloading Vanderbilt PhD Thesis

Next, it will prompt you for some answers. The different prompts are:

Question Description
thesis_title

Title of the thesis. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it.

Examples:

  • Understanding Exoplanets and Other Variable Sources
  • The Clustering of Galaxies on the Smallest Scales Across Cosmic Time
first_name

Author’s first name. first_name will used for the title page of the dissertation.

Examples:

  • Adam
  • Rose
last_name

Author’s last name. last_name will used for the title page of the dissertation.

Examples:

  • Calderon
  • Piscionere
repo_name

Name of the directory/repository, in which the thesis will be saved.<br> This name is selected by default, but can be changed.<br> This field should not contain spaces.

Examples:

  • Calderon_Victor_Astro_PhD_Thesis
  • Szewciw_Adam_Astro_PhD_Thesis
add_signatures

Option for adding signatures to the thesis.

Options:

  1. “y” … Add signatures
  2. “n” … Do not add signatures
department_name

Name of the department. Default: Physics and Astronomy. Should not contain ‘_’ (underscores) symbols.

Examples:

  • Physics and Astronomy
  • Name of another department
dissertation_date

Date of the Dissertation presentation. Format: Month Year.

Examples:

  • May 2019
  • August 2020
name_committee_1

First and last name of the committee member 1. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it.

Examples:

  • Keivan Stassun
  • Andreas Berlind
name_committee_2

First and last name of the committee member 2. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it.

Examples:

  • Keivan Stassun
  • Andreas Berlind
name_committee_3

First and last name of the committee member 3. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it.

Examples:

  • Keivan Stassun
  • Andreas Berlind
name_committee_4

First and last name of the committee member 4. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it.

Examples:

  • Keivan Stassun
  • Andreas Berlind
name_committee_5

First and last name of the committee member 5. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it.

Examples:

  • Keivan Stassun
  • Andreas Berlind

Writing the Thesis

Once you’ve downloaded the repository and answered all of the questions, you can start writing your thesis.

My advice would be to follow these steps to guarantee that you’re doing it correctly:

  1. Create a new repository on Github. This will be the repository for your newly created local repository.
  2. git init your local repository.
  3. Follow the instructions to upload the files of your dissertation to Github.
  4. Write your dissertation.

After having downloaded and answered the questions, the repository should look like this:

Calderon_Victor_Vanderbilt_Astro_PhD_Thesis/
├── Bibliography
│   └── bibliography.bib
├── Chapters
│   ├── acknowledgments.tex
│   ├── appendix_A.tex
│   ├── chapter_1.tex
│   ├── chapter_2.tex
│   ├── chapter_3.tex
│   ├── chapter_4.tex
│   ├── dedication.tex
│   ├── future_work.tex
│   ├── introduction.tex
│   └── titlepage.tex
├── Extras
│   ├── commands.tex
│   ├── headings_settings.tex
│   └── packages.tex
├── Figures
│   ├── project_1
│   ├── project_2
│   └── project_3
├── Makefile
├── README.md
├── Thesis
│   └── thesis.tex
└── requirements.txt

8 directories, 18 files

This is the file structure after downloaing the repository.

The main file of the repository is: Thesis/thesis.tex. This is the file that will get compiled by LaTeX, and will produce a PDF version.

The only files that you will need to edit (aside from thesis.tex) are located in the Chapters directory. These are the ones that you need to edit.

Compiling your Thesis

This repository includes a Makefile. This file serves as the file that will make the cleaning, compiling, and opening the pdf of the thesis.tex file.

To show all of the options of the Makefile, write:

make show-help

This will show you a list of options:

./Calderon_Victor_Vanderbilt_Astro_PhD_Thesis: make show-help
Available rules:

all                 Perform all tasks
clean               Clean all unnecessary latex-related files
open_pdf            List all unnecessary files
thesis.tex          Compiles Main Thesis file

To compile your thesis, you will need to run the following commands:

make all

or

make thesis.tex

This will create all of the necessary files for compiling your thesis.

To open the PDF version of the thesis, run:

make open_pdf

and a PDF version of the thesis.tex file will pop up.

Note

In order to properly use the Makefile and compile thesis.tex, you will need latexmk installed. If you’re on a MAC, you want to check out the Latexmk documentation, and make sure to have MacTex installed on your computer.

An example of the resulting PDF can be found in:

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