Vanderbilt PhD Thesis - Template¶
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:
|
first_name |
Author’s first name. Examples:
|
last_name |
Author’s last name. Examples:
|
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:
|
add_signatures |
Option for adding signatures to the thesis. Options:
|
department_name |
Name of the department. Default: Physics and Astronomy. Should not contain ‘_’ (underscores) symbols. Examples:
|
dissertation_date |
Date of the Dissertation presentation.
Format: Examples:
|
name_committee_1 |
First and last name of the committee member 1. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it. Examples:
|
name_committee_2 |
First and last name of the committee member 2. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it. Examples:
|
name_committee_3 |
First and last name of the committee member 3. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it. Examples:
|
name_committee_4 |
First and last name of the committee member 4. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it. Examples:
|
name_committee_5 |
First and last name of the committee member 5. Should not have ‘_’ symbols in it. Examples:
|
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:
- Create a new repository on Github. This will be the repository for your newly created local repository.
git init
your local repository.- Follow the instructions to upload the files of your dissertation to Github.
- 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: