Although a thesis or dissertation is planned and executed with the advice and supervision of the advisor and committee, the student must assume primary responsibility both in terms of the content of the document and in terms of its format and presentation.
Graduate students may be responsible for all or part of the expense of their thesis/dissertation research. This expense is highly variable depending on the discipline, the research topic, and the availability of support from funded projects, sponsored programs, or academic departments.
Theses and dissertations submitted for graduate degrees must be completed in the English language. In circumstances in which scholarship would be enhanced if these documents are completed in a foreign language, this must be approved by the student’s committee and the Chair/Head of the program. In such cases, an English translation of the title and abstract must be included in the document.
The candidate must submit to the Graduate School the Thesis/Dissertation Submission Form and submit their thesis/dissertation electronically by the published deadline date listed on the Graduate School website. Students should consult these deadlines whenever they approach important steps in their careers. Suggestions for preparation of the manuscript may be found in the Thesis and Dissertation Formatting Guide.
Students have the right to disseminate the findings of their theses and dissertations more broadly than is accomplished by archiving and microfilming. Prompt publication of important results is clearly in the best interests of the academic community and society as a whole. Students are therefore encouraged to bring such results to the manuscript submission stage within one year of the award of the degree.
Master’s theses and doctoral dissertations are electronically archived by the Libraries and ProQuest/UMI. General information on copyrights, publication, and embargos may be found in the Thesis and Dissertation Formatting Guide. As a public institution, CSU exposes bibliographic information about theses and dissertations on the Internet for purposes of discovery and retrieval. One of the functions of CSU is the generation and dissemination of contributions of knowledge and culture. The fundamental purpose of theses and dissertations is to make such contributions openly available for public benefit.