Updated LaTeX document class for Ohio State University (OSU) graduate school dissertation and thesis documents

Back in 1996, The Ohio State University Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department made available LaTeX2e support files including a document class that complied with the graduate school's format for dissertations (see samples pages, guidelines, templates, and other resources from the graduate school). The resulting osudissert96.cls and osudissert96-mods.sty from the ECE department was kept up to date through 1998, but it was left to lapse out of compliance after several format updates from the graduate school (including a recent one in 2009). Additionally, the graduate school only officially supports helping students with documents "typeset" in Microsoft Word (and even their Word templates may require a more recent version than they claim on the website).

So back when I put together my dissertation (which has source code available to review) in 2010, I updated those old ECE templates for the 2010 format. I tried to make them backward compatible with the old osudissert96 to make them nice drop-in replacements for anyone using the outdated versions. You can find them at:

• http://links.tedpavlic.com/zip/osudissert10.zip
• http://links.tedpavlic.com/zip/sample-osudissert10.zip

For the most part, the old osudissert96 documentation still applies. However, it might be better just browsing through the sample and/or using the sample as a template for your own document. To get the sample up and running,

1. Unzip sample-osudissert10.zip.
2. Unzip osudissert10.zip.
3. Put the CLS and STY files from osudissert10.zip into the same directory as the files from sample-osudissert10.zip
4. Build the sample dissertation with:
   1. pdflatex Thesis.tex
   2. bibtex Thesis.aux
   3. pdflatex Thesis.tex
   4. pdflatex Thesis.tex
5. Review the resulting Thesis.pdf file, which also includes documentation on how to get your own dissertation up and running.

There is also a README file in sample-osudissert10.zip that basically says the same as above. Experts may just need the files in osudissert10.zip, but it will still be useful to see the quick reference in Appendix B of the sample dissertation. Note that the documentclass is still called osudissert96.cls even though the zip file is called osudissert10.zip; this choice was made for compatibility with old dissertations using the old files.

I hope that helps someone out there. I probably won't be monitoring the graduate school format policies now that I am not in graduate school anymore, but I am usually happy to help with "how-to-modify" questions over e-mail (if I have time). Good luck!

Thesis, Defense, and Source Available

I packaged it all up, documented it, and made it available on-line. Hopefully having a whole LaTeX thesis source on-line will be helpful to someone. This thesis has multiple indices (people and topic), glossaries, and all sorts of PDF hyperlinking and referencing. It uses packages like authorindex, hyperref, index, and natbib. I hope it serves as a good example for putting together a digital book.

• Research Page
  
  • Optimal Foraging Theory Revisited thesis
  • Optimal Foraging Theory Revisited defense presentation
    (best viewed in latest Adobe Acrobat)
• Thesis LaTeX Source Directory


• OhioLink Entry

Archives are also stored in the source directory. The defense presentation is best viewed in latest Adobe Acrobat as it makes use of a number of very modern PDF features. The presentation is built with LaTeX using powerdot.

The source directory also includes a modified osudissert96-mods.sty and the standard osudissert96.cls file, which is part of the osudissert96 (info, source) package. The modifications:

• Force title to uppercase to match updated submission rules.


• Additional hyperref support: If phantomsection defined, will add phantomsection in dedication page.


• Additional hyperref support: alphanumeric page numbers on title page to prevent page name conflicts.

Just so everyone knows, the two acceptable graduate unit names for the OSU ECE department are

• Graduate Program in Electrical & Computer Engineering


• Electrical & Computer Engineering Graduate Program

Finally, a date for the defense!

Finally, after lots of unexpected twists and turns, my MS thesis defense and PhD qualifier has arrived.

The acknowledgments (and abstract and vita) taken from the frontmatter of the document are available on-line. Details of the actual defense are available below. Of course, the public is welcome.

When: Tuesday, June 5, 2007, at 2:30pm

Where: Dreese Labs Room 260

Title: Optimal Foraging Theory Revisited

Abstract: Optimal foraging theory explains adaptation via natural selection through quantitative models. Behaviors that are most likely to be favored by natural selection can be predicted by maximizing functions representing Darwinian fitness. Optimization has natural applications in engineering, and so this approach can also be used to design behaviors of engineered agents. In this thesis, we generalize ideas from optimal foraging theory to allow for its easy application to engineering design. By extending standard models and suggesting new value functions of interest, we enhance the analytical efficacy of optimal foraging theory and suggest possible optimality reasons for previously unexplained behaviors observed in nature. Finally, we develop a procedure for maximizing a class of optimization functions relevant to our general model. As designing strategies to maximize returns in a stochastic environment is effectively an optimal portfolio problem, our methods are influenced by results from modern and post-modern portfolio theory. We suggest that optimal foraging theory could benefit by injecting updated concepts from these economic areas.