One of the most difficult tasks facing a graduate student is writing a thesis. In this popular and practical workshop, Dr. Alton Harestad (SFU BISC) presents a learning tool that acknowledges common behaviors among grad students writing a thesis: fear, procrastination, and guilt. More importantly, this tool will help restore direction, motivation, and excitement to this phase of your graduate research. Using a “work matrix”, you'll learn how to set a series of small achievable goals, match tasks with available time and state of emotion, set realistic objectives, and monitor your progress.

Participants will be asked to break their thesis (or other large project of their choice) into small tasks, and set achievable goals for each task. Issues around other components of writing a thesis will also be discussed. Graduate students from all disciplines are welcome!

This presentation is open to all graduate students and is a part of the Thesis Boot Camp program offered by the Research Commons. Register for Alton Harestad's presentation or click here to learn more about the complete Thesis Boot Camp program.

NOTE: Current Boot Camp registrants have already automatically been registered for this presentation.

This demonstration introduces you to the Thesis Submission process and the Thesis Template.

You are walked through the resources on the website and how to download the template-based file and its instructions.

Learn how to:

• write in the MS Word template-based file
• format your text using styles
• bring text in from other documents
• insert figures, images, and auto-numbered captions
• generate the Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, etc.

If you’ve begun writing, send your document to theses@sfu.ca in advance of the workshop; one will be used in demonstrating the Library’s thesis template. After the session, the formatted document will be returned in which the student can continue his/her work.

View a video of the Thesis Template & Submission workshop.

This presentation shows students how to:

• create and easily format tables in Microsoft Word
• create high-quality images from other MSWord documents (e.g., questionnaires, landscaped tables, flowcharts, etc.)
• crop, resize, and rotate images in Photoshop for inserting into your thesis
• block-out signatures on letters and forms as well
• change PDF conversion settings for high- or press-quality print
• convert PDFs to high-quality jpgs for inclusion in your document, eliminating the need to either reformat other documents or have landscaped pages in your thesis, which creates page-numbering and other issues for students..

If time permits, specific issues can be addressed as well—please send your files in advance to theses@sfu.ca, outlining what you’re looking to do. After the session, the formatted document will be returned in which you can continue working.

Workshop Handout

View a video of the Tables, Images, PDFs, High-Quality Print, etc. workshop.

This workshop covers personal preferences you might have or issues with your thesis that is based on am MS Word Library template. Any topic can be addressed such as: fixing margins and page numbering errors, adding committee members to (and optimizing space on) the Approval page, adjusting the Title Page and Table of Contents for aesthetics, generating List(s) of Tables/Figures, table design and tweaking tables, converting to high-resolution PDFs, optimizing Word's settings, etc. Specific issues can be addressed—please send your file(s), outlining what you’re looking to do in advance to theses@sfu.ca.