Dissertation date -- commencement or submission date

[Emily Symonds Stenberg]

Hello,

Representatives from our Graduate School and Libraries are discussing what date can or should be used for electronic theses and dissertations.

The Graduate has continued the requirement for students to use their commencement month and year (e.g. May 2015) on the title page and not the date they defended and/or submitted the dissertation. This was the policy for print dissertations; at this point, however, no one is sure why that was the policy. 

The library catalog records only use the year. Our ETDs are in Digital Commons. Students are required to enter at least the year for the "Date of Award" field -- as an administrator I set it the to the 15th (May, August, or December) and adjust embargo requests based on this date instead of the date it was submitted to the system. This isn’t a policy but a practice I adopted for my own workflows. 

What is your policy for the date on the title page of a thesis or dissertation, and why? Have you changed it for ETDs? 

Thank you,

Emily

 

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Emily Symonds Stenberg | Digital Publishing and Preservation Librarian 

Scholarly Publishing | openscholarship.wustl.edu | Olin Library

Washington University in St. Louis | Campus Box 1061 | St. Louis MO 63130

E: emily.s...@wustl.edu | P: 314-935-2865 | ORCID: 0000-0002-6665-5769

[Bryttne Lowden]

Hi Emily:

 

At Texas State University, we use the commencement month and year, as it was the long-standing policy for print theses and dissertations.  We haven't changed this policy for ETDs and feel there is no need for our university to do so at this time.  Plus, it makes it easier on the student while finishing a document to select one of three months and the current year for the title page.

 

Students can add their defense dates in Vireo, but that information is not required.  The dates that are stored in our Digital Collections (the library's website for people to view our ETD submissions) is the date the document was approved in Vireo.

 

All the best,

 

Bryttne Lowden

Senior Graduate Degree Audit Specialist

Texas State University

601 University Drive

San Marcos, TX 78666-4684

Phone: 512-245-2054

E: emily.s...@wustl.edu | P: 314-935-2865 | ORCID: 0000-0002-6665-5769

[Babcock, Renee E]

Emily, at UT Austin, we use the month (May, August or December) and year the degree was awarded, since the language on our title page says the dissertation is used to partially fulfill degree requirements for the degree. Our students can defend pretty much any time, and frequently do not graduate the semester they defend (it’s quite common for students to graduate a semester or [rarely] two or more after they defend, especially if they defend close to our ETD submission deadline). We graduate students all year long. 

As for our processing, we only process one semester at a time (the current semester, in other words we don’t take ETDs before the semester of graduation), so we really need that graduation month and year on the page (plus in Vireo) so we can filter the files we are supposed to be working on, since we take in such large numbers (around 1700 a year).

Renee

Renee E. Babcock | Degree Plan Evaluator III | Graduate School | The University of Texas at Austin | (512) 232-3629

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[Larry Tague]

Emily,

At the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, we have three diploma dates; May, August, or December of each year. This has nothing to do with their ET/D completion date or the date of their defense. However, the official date of graduation is when they complete all of their graduation requirements and receive their congrats email. This is the date that is used with any letters of graduate certification. Hope this helps.

Larry Tague

Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Graduate Health Sciences
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
920 Madison Ave., Suite 807
Memphis, TN 38103
Phone Bus.: 901-448-7152

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