Master of Arts in Social Sciences
Thesis Organization Instructions
 

The internal organization of the Thesis is left to the student and his or her Committee Chair.  Each Thesis, however, must contain the following, in the following order:

• A blank sheet of paper,

• A title page with ORIGINAL signatures of Committee members approving the Thesis (Title Page example),

  • For Library cataloging purposes students must use their full name,

  • Indicate concentration within the MASS Program under author's name,

  • Committee members' names must be typed under the signature line,

• Acknowledgements (optional),

• Table of Contents,

• List of Tables (if included),

• List of Illustrations (if included),

• Body of the Thesis,

• Appendices (if included),

• Bibliography, and

• A blank sheet of paper.

The title page for EACH  of the four Thesis copies submitted to the Library must have ORIGINAL signatures.

Illustrations, maps, charts, tables, etc. must be an integral part of the printed document.  DO NOT mount material using rubber cement or other forms of adhesive.  All illustrations and maps must be clear and readable.  All illustrations, maps, charts, tables, etc. must be captioned and identified with a Table or Figure number, e.g. Figure 2.3 (the third figure in Chapter 2).  Font style in illustrations, maps, charts, tables should be the same style as in the body of the Thesis.  Illustrations in the form of electronic files (.jpg, .gif, .bmp, etc.) should not be pixilated.

If the title of the Thesis and the last name of the author exceed 75 SPACES, a shortened title, not to exceed 75 spaces must be submitted for use on the spine of the bound document.

All pages, beginning with the title page, must be numbered or accounted for consecutively.  Do not put a page number on the title page.  Pagination of front matter begins with the page immediately after the title page.  Front matter is paginated using lower-case Roman numerals (e.g. ii, iii, iv, etc.); the page immediately after the title page is page ii.  Arabic numerals (beginning with 1) are used beginning with the first page of the body of the document.  The page number of the first page of each chapter is placed at the bottom center of the page.  All other page numbers are placed in the top right corner of the page, 5/8 of an inch from the top and 1 inch from the right edge of the page.     

Upon approval of the Thesis by the student’s Committee, the student must submit four copies of the complete Thesis to the Baron-Forness Library.  These copies will be bound.  Two copies will be retained by the Library, one returned to the Department, and one to the student.  There is no charge for binding these four copies.  The student may have additional copies bound by paying a binding fee to the Library.  The Library may refuse to accept copies that do not meet the requirements outlined above.  Students have not completed all requirements for graduation until they provide the MASS Program Director with a receipt for their thesis copies submitted to the Library.

Two copies of a 100-150 word abstract must be submitted to the Library with the Thesis copies. 

A Thesis becomes wholly the property of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and may not be published in whole or part by any agency or person without the permission of the author.  The author retains all publication rights and is encouraged to publish the Thesis.

Official information about applying for a formal copyright for a Thesis may be obtained at:  http://www.copyright.gov

All questions and situations not covered by the instructions above should be referred to the Program Director.