With the exception of MFA students, who have the option of submitting their thesis in hard copy form, all students will submit their thesis via ProQuest.  Your deposit, whether submitted electronically or in hard copy, must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. central time on the established deadline date for a given semester.  The deposit deadline for Spring 2024 is 5:00 p.m. central time, April 23.  Please do not wait to submit your thesis until the deadline day.  This will give the Graduate College time to review the thesis to determine if it is complete, and to notify you if there are missing materials that will need to be submitted before the deadline.  Failure to submit the thesis by the deadline date established by the Graduate College will result in the postponement of graduation to a future session.  

At deposit, and regardless of whether you are submitting via ProQuest or in hard copy, your thesis must be complete and in final form.  Your thesis must include all edits or changes your thesis committee requested as a result of your defense.  It must also include all required manuscript elements, including properly formatted preliminary pages, and meet our formatting requirements.  

Below are instructions for both electronic and hard copy submissions.

ProQuest Deposit

With the exception of MFA students, who have the option of submitting their thesis in hard copy form, all students will submit their thesis via ProQuest. More information about the process—and information about copyright, fees, and publication details—can be found here.  Once you submit, you will receive an email receipt of submission from ProQuest.  If you don’t, please call 319.335.3599 to make sure we have received you submission.  Remember, you must meet the deposit deadline.

If there are formatting errors, you will receive corrections.  These will be sent to the email address you used when registering on ProQuest.  You are required to make these corrections and resubmit the corrected thesis to your ProQuest account.  Note that you will not receive an email confirmation of your resubmission from ProQuest.  If you are unsure whether the Graduate College has received your submission, please call 319.335.3599.

The Graduate College has now shifted to electronic committee verification of all theses and dissertations submitted via ProQuest. During the registration process, students will enter their committee members' names and email addresses.  Once the format review portion of the process concludes and the Graduate College accepts your thesis, each committee member will receive an email from etdadministrator@proquest.com, letting them know the thesis is ready to be verified.  Committee verification follows the Graduate College format review.  It does NOT precede deposit as it used to.

The deposit may be submitted no later than the end of the semester (summers excluded) following the sessions in which the final examination is passed (See Graduate College Manual of Rules and Regulations, Section XII.M.).

Hard Copy Deposit (for MFA Students)

MFA students who opt to submit their thesis as a hard copy must meet the same deadlines as students who submit their theses electronically. At deposit you must submit two, unbound, single-sided copies of you thesis, complete and in final form.  The Graduate College must also receive a signed Report of Thesis Approval.  With the shift to remote thesis defenses, committee approval of the thesis may be transmitted to the Graduate College through a variety of means.  Contact Erin Kaufman (erin-kaufman@uiowa.edu) if you have any questions about this. 

The deposit may be submitted no later than the end of the semester (summers excluded) following the session in which the final examination is passed (See Graduate College Manual of Rule and Regulations, Section XII.M.).

All hard-copy theses are to be unbound, with single-column type on one side of the page only.

Paper

  • 8 ½ x 11 inch
  • White
  • Archival (acid-free)
  • 20–24 pound weight
  • The author must obtain prior approval from the Graduate College for the use of non-standard size paper.

Print Quality

  • The thesis deposit is to be reproduced on a laser-quality printer.
  • The two copies required at deposit must be identical (two original copies or two photocopies).
  • All pages of a deposit are to be clean, evenly dark, and with no visible evidence of correction.
  • Final copies must meet high standards of permanence, legibility, uniformity, and reproducibility.