Theses & Dissertations 

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You will find all of the information you need on completing your thesis or dissertation from completing paperwork, to format checking and electronically submitting your work through ProQuest in this section.

Step 1:  Preliminary Approval and Notice of Defense

The student and his/her committee are jointly responsible for seeing to it that the thesis or dissertation follows a correct form of scholarly style and usage. The student can follow the guidelines outlined in the Style Guide or may follow the style specified by their committee or department as long as the style is consistent throughout the paper. In fulfillment of this responsibility, each member of a candidate's advisory committee must have made his/her criticisms and have seen and approved the changes the student has made to remove the criticisms. Such approval is tentative acceptance of the content, organization, form of expression, style and usage.

• The committee approval shall be executed on the Preliminary Approval form and filed in the Graduate School by the deadline. The signed approval is a commitment that the members of the committee will require no major changes of the content, organization, or style after the final copy has been prepared.
• The Preliminary Approval and Notice of Defense forms must be submitted to The Graduate School two weeks prior to the scheduled oral examination date and on or before the Preliminary Approval deadline.

Step 2: Format Check

The Graduate School will provide one format check. A list of formatters/editors is also available at the Graduate School if you prefer to hire your own formatter.

• Submit a complete draft of your thesis or dissertation to the Graduate School so that the format review can begin.
• Be sure to include the Format Checklist with your document.
• If you have scheduled your defense in advance of the deadline, you must submit the complete draft within two weeks before the defense date.

Please note that it is expected there will be content revisions needed after receiving feedback from your committee. However, it is also expected that the document is ready to defend, meaning that your document is in its final stage of completion.

Step 3: Hold the Oral Defense

• Students and the entire committee must be physically present at the oral defense.  If, due to unforeseen circumstances, they cannot be physically present, then the oral defense must be rescheduled to another date.
• If a committee member is only available by telephone or Skype, please send a memo to the Dean of The Graduate School, indicating who will not be at the defense, and what arrangements have been made.  This memo needs to be approved and signed by the entire committee before submitting to The Graduate School.

Step 4: Submit electronic Thesis/Dissertation to UMI/ProQuest Publishing

• The Overview of Manuscript Submission page lets you knkow what you will need to do to prepare for your submission.
• You will upload your Thesis/Dissertation in PDF format to the ProQuest ETD Administrator site. Please see the instructions on How to Prepare your Manuscript for Submission.
• The Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Submission Guide for UND Graduate Students will take you step by step through the ProQuest system.
• After your format has been checked by the Graudate School and you have made the required changes from your your committee, you will submit the final version of your document electronically to UMI/ProQuest at www.etdadmin.com/und. 
• Once you electronically submit your final copy for publishing, no changes are made to the format or content. Therefore, the burden of how the manuscript looks is entirely the responsibility of the student author.

Step 5: Ph.D. Students Only - Survey of Earned Doctorates

This survey is for Ph.D. students only, this does not apply to Ed.D. or D.A. students.

• Ph.D. Students need to complete the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) online at https://sed.norc.org/survey.
• The Graduate School, as well as yourself, will receive a confirmation email after you have completed the survey.