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Theses and Dissertations

UCF Theses and Dissertations

This site is intended to help students locate information about Honors Undergraduate Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations. It is not intended to replace guidance and requirements provided by your advisor, the College of Graduate Studies, or the Burnett Honors College.

Common Abbreviations

Three main abbreviations are used on this page. They are:

  • ETD, or Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • ETDs are theses and dissertations that are born-digital, most commonly as a pdf.
  • RTD, or Retrospective Theses and Dissertations​
    • RTDs are electronic reproductions of print theses and dissertations
  • HUT, or Honors Undergraduate Theses​
    • HUTs are undergraduate Honors theses.

A Brief History

Graduate theses were first published at Florida Technological University (later UCF) in 1972. The first thesis was defended in March of that year, titled Computer Method for Airport Noise Exposure Forecast, and was written by John M. Bateman.

The first dissertation, titled An Associative Backend Machine for Data Base Management, was defended in November, 1980, and it was a Ph.D. in Computer Science awarded to Alireza Hurson.

Honors Undergraduate Theses, previously known as Honors in the Major, began in 1989 and the first Honors Thesis, Analysis of Larval and Adult Cuticles of Posterior Bithorax-Complex Mutant Homozygotes in Drosophila Melanogaster written by My Linn Sawyer, was completed in 1990.

As of January, 2020, over 14,000 Masters Theses, Doctoral Dissertations, and Honors Undergraduate Theses have been completed.

Award Winners

Each year, both the College of Graduate Studies and the Burnett Honors College recognize outstanding research done by their students.

College of Graduate Studies Awards

Burnett Honors College Founder's Day Award

Calling all UCF thesis and dissertation authors!

The University of Central Florida Libraries invites you to help us extend the reach of UCF's Graduate Theses and Dissertations and Honors Undergraduate Theses.  There are over 5,000 theses and dissertations that were published only in print, and therefore, reach a very limited audience.  By receiving permission to digitize and post these works online, these works can be used by researchers around the world, showing the excellence of scholarship at the University of Central Florida.

Why should I get involved?

Theses and dissertations, both graduate and undergraduate, are commonly used as the basis for research around the world. While today's theses and dissertations are published electronically and provide researchers and fellow students with ready access to scholarly materials, works completed at UCF before 2004 (graduate) and 2011 (undergraduate) are only available as print copies on our libraries' shelves.

How can I help?

With your assistance, we can begin to transform our print collection of student-authored theses and dissertations into a digital collection with unlimited worldwide access. If you published a thesis or dissertation in print, please consider allowing us to add your work to the growing digital collection.

Find more information on the RTD page of this guide.

Contact us

If you have any questions about this guide, have suggestions for content, or are trying to find your thesis or dissertation, please contact us.

Kerri Bottorff, Digital Initiatives Adjunct Librarian
Email: kerri.bottorff@ucf.edu
Phone: 407-823-1129

Lee Dotson, Digital Initiatives Librarian
Email: lee.dotson@ucf.edu
Phone: 407-823-1236

Or visit us at:

http://stars.library.ucf.edu/​

https://library.ucf.edu/about/departments/technology-solutions-digital-initiatives/