General Guidelines

• The Department of Natural Sciences no longer requires “hard” copies of theses; electronic copies, in PDF format, should be submitted.
• Each thesis should include a standard Cover page (template online) with the author’s full name, College affiliation, and date. (Do not include faculty advisors; theses have a single author.)
• The main text should be written in American English, 12 pt, in a common font (e.g. Times Roman, Calibri, etc.). Figures should be annotated in at least 8pt font. Use standard margins of 1” (top, bottom, left, and right).
• Figures should be placed within the text where they are first referred to.
• All pages except the Title page should be consecutively numbered in the lower right corner of the footer.
• All theses should include a Contents page.
• All theses should include an Abstract. In some cases, a second Abstract in a relevant alternative language may be appropriate.

Sections

The following sections are common, but they may be adjusted for different styles of theses after consultation with your Reader. Start each section on a new page.

• Introduction
• Materials & Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• Literature Cited

Literature Cited

• Literature Cited should be presented in a consistent format appropriate to your discipline. If in doubt, use the CSE format.
• There is a very convenient style generator at BibGuru.
• The Honnold Library has information on citation management software.
• Optionally, you may wish to print out one or more hard copies of your thesis for your own bookshelf, or as gifts to parents, etc. Thesis binding can be done at Connections (Honnold Library) – the traditional hard, black binding costs ~$16 (2022).