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University of Michigan Rackham Ph.D. Thesis & Dissertation Template

I modified the template created by pettni to provide additional instructions, structure, packages, and styling changes based on Rackham's formatting guidelines as of January 2022.

Example of a complete dissertation (passing Rackham's format check in January 2022) using this template (using Overleaf to compile): https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/172607.

I welcome suggestions and contributions (e.g., pull requests) that help improve the template and the provided instructions.

Feel free to

(See below for the original README content.)

Original README

ubuntu-latest-texlive ubuntu-latest-texlive

um-thesis

Template for a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Michigan. The template is based on the Komascript scrbook class and is intended to be a modern, lightweight, and customizable alternative to the different rac.sty-based classes (the original rac.sty was created in 1988!). Example of complete thesis: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/140897.

Features

  • Follows Rackham requirements (open an issue or a PR if this is no longer the case)
  • List of acronyms (glossaries package)
  • List of appendices
  • Clutter-free main files
  • Easy font selection

Compilation

Hosted

The template works in Overleaf as of November 2018; just set the compiler to XeLaTeX in the project settings (or remove the fontspec package and use the default compiler pdfLaTeX). I don't know how tikzexternalize is handled in these environments, so the \tikzexternalize[prefix=figures_compiled/] command in preamble.tex should probably be left disabled. Any custom fonts will also have to be uploaded to overleaf.

Local

The recommended tex environment is TexLive with a new-ish version of latexmk and koma-script v3.28 or newer.

  • On Ubuntu 20.04 the latex packages provided the official APT repositories work fine. Install all necessary packages via
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base texlive-xetex latexmk biber

  • On Ubuntu 18.04 the latex packages in APT are dated and will not work out of the box. See https://www.tug.org/texlive/acquire-netinstall.html for the manual installation procedure.

  • For a schemes-basic TexLive install this commands installs all required CTAN packages

tlmgr install latexmk xetex fontspec biblatex biber pgf pgfplots koma-script
tlmgr install booktabs chngcntr todonotes glossaries setspace unicode-math xpatch
tlmgr install lipsum datatool mfirstuc textcase

The template can be compiled with latexmk using settings defined in latexmkrc. The default compiler is xelatex (to use pdflatex the fontspec package must be removed in preamble.tex).

latexmk

Alternatively, use an environment like Sublime Text + LatexTools or VS Code + LaTeXWorkshop that uses latexmk under the hood.

Configuration

The Koma-Script Bundle is highly customizable, see the Koma-Script guide for detailed descriptions.

Fonts

Fonts are handled with fontspec/unicode-math and the \setmainfont{} and \setmathfont{} commands. For finer control, use the \setkomafont{element} commands (for a full list of customizable elements, see Chapter 3.6 of the Koma-Script guide). Suggested font collections:

Acknowledgment

The title page template is taken from the thesis-umich.cls derivation of rac.sty.