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UNR LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation Template version 0.5 (11 April 2026)
by Paul J. Hurtado, 
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, 
University of Nevada, Reno

Updated versions of these files may be found at
https://pauljhurtado.com/latex/
or via the UNR Graduate School website.

Please send any suggestions for improving this template to
Paul Hurtado <phurtado@unr.edu>

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This zip file should contain this README.txt file, along with: 
	Thesis-template.tex - Template for M.S. thesis or Ph.D. dissertation
	Thesis-template.pdf  
	UNRlogoN.pdf		- UNR "N" Logo for Committee Approval Form page
	Thesis-example.tex	- Example thesis content (use as a guide)
	Thesis-example.pdf	
	tikzdiagram.tex		- Example tikz diagram
	tikzdiagram.pdf
	examplerefs.bib		- Example bibliography file (for bibtex/biblatex)

Please see the top of the Thesis-template.tex file for instructions to get started using this template.
	
Thesis-template.tex can be used either as a doctoral (Ph.D.) dissertation template or master's (M.S.) thesis template (see instructions). It has been developed to make use of the new LaTeX Tagging Project tools for generating accessible PDF 2.0 UA/2 documents that are automatically tagged and thus screen readable by software for the visually impared. 

Thesis-example.tex is an example thesis document with (1) content examples, and (2) more comments in the preamble than Thesis-template.tex. Please read Thesis-example.pdf.  This example document should serve as a helpful comparative resource during the preparation of your thesis/dissertation.

These new LaTeX tools are still actively being developed, and the implementation details and package conflicts will likely be evolving over the next year or so!  Please be patient as we try and update this template accordingly, and help by sharing any suggestions you may have for improving the template and guidance for authors!  


Additionally,

1. See the "guidelines document" for dealing with these LuaLaTeX accessible PDFs at

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bn4H9zB4_EiqsS7m38_1f-udxmJWJgVqUmzK6cKAvJI/

The document will likely be updated regularly. There are still some limitations, so please review the example thesis document and the above guidelines carefully!

2. Many packages are incompatable (even if only partly incompatable) with the new LaTeX tagging routines, so be careful to not include unnecessary packages in the thesis/dissertation preamble. To work around some known incompatabilities, see the Thesis-example documents and the guidelines linked above.


3. After \begin{document} there are various frontmatter pages required by the UNR Graduate School guidelines for thesis and dissertation documents. Do not edit those any more than you need to (do not change the parge formatting, in particular).

You should only need to edit the contents of the Abstract (required), Dedication (optional), and Acknowledgements (optional) pages, the copyright page (optional) will autopopulate unless you wish to add more details about the copyright specifics. Comment out the optional pages that you wish to exclude from your thesis/dissertation (just in case you change your mind later, you'll know where they should go in the document).

4. You WILL need to edit the Committee Approval page to add the committee member information, but should not need to edit anything above "Jane Doe, Ph.D.". In the past, the Committee Approval page was added by inserting a 1 page PDF form provided by the graduate school. This might conflict with the document tagging and pagination, so I've made a native LaTeX version of that page you should use instead.  It should autopopulate with the title, author, and advisor information, and the M.S. vs. Ph.D. content differences (please carefully follow the instructions at the top of the template document!). 

You should only need to modify the committee member information. Make sure the final spacing looks like it (mostly) agrees with the spacing in the grad school forms available at https://www.unr.edu/grad/current-students/filing-guidelines#6.

5. Finally, the top-level sections in this template are chapters. Modify your content accordingly. The main thesis content AFTER the frontmatter pages begins at 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

%					MAIN   THESIS   CONTENT   BEGINS   HERE

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % % %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

After that, please refer to the Thesis-example.tex document for guidance on dealing with some of the workarounds needed to deal with the existing limitations of these new LaTeX tools. Keep things simple and standard, wherever possible.

6. If you want to print and bind an official copy of your submitted thesis, the document should work in "twoside" mode, which gives odd and even pages different margins to accommodate binding the thesis/dissertation pages. Leave the documentclass settings to oneside unless you reach the point where you need to have the final, submitted document bound, and only then should you switch to twoside if you need to modify the margins per the printing/binding company instructions. PLEASE verify that all pages labeled with odd (even) page numbers are actually on odd (even) pages of the full PDF, otherwise your margins won't be correct for binding! 

7. If your document compiles without errors, that's excellent! Please also use the Adobe Acrobat accessibility checker (available on UNR computers) regularly to ensure that the document meets the relevant accessiblity standards. This is easier than trying to fix all of the problems at once right before you turn it in to the graduate school. Optionally, you may also want to test the document out with a screen reader for the visually impared, such as the free software NVDA (see the google doc linked above for more details). 