Thesis submission process

Master’s initial submission

• Submit an electronic copy of your thesis to your Graduate Program Assistant for distribution to the examination committee by the deadlines indicated below. Please check with your department, they may have different regulations.

• The defence is commonly scheduled within 2 to 5 weeks from your initial submission of your thesis. An oral defence of a master's thesis is not required by the School of Graduate Studies. Programs may elect to have an oral defence as a degree requirement (please see individual program entries in the Graduate Calendar).

• The only submission that the Thesis Office reviews is your finalized thesis to Spectrum. Deposit of a  thesis in Spectrum entails agreement to the terms of the Thesis Non-Exclusive Licence. Further information on this topic can be found at the Copyright Guide for Thesis preparation.

Doctoral initial submission

In consultation with your supervisor, you complete and submit the Doctoral thesis examining committee form and your External Examiner’s curriculum vitae to your Graduate Program Director. The examination date must be set a minimum of 6 weeks (not including university closure).

Once approved, the following documents are required for a complete initial submission and must be sent to the thesis office:

• Doctoral Thesis Examining Committee form
• Electronic copy of thesis in PDF/A (archival PDF format)
• Abstract (Word document)
• A copy of the candidate’s up-to-date CV
• A copy of the external examiner’s up-to-date CV

Conflict of interest

Every doctoral thesis examination committee member must not have a conflict of interest as outlined in the thesis regulations.

You and your supervisor will complete and sign the PhD examining committee form. The GPD is required to approve your examining committee composition which includes confirming that the Chair and all committee members do not have a conflict of interest with regards to evaluating the thesis. This approval should happen before the thesis is submitted along with the examining committee form to the School of Graduate Studies (SGS). There is an optional conflict of interest form that your supervisor or GPD can use to help with the process. The two options are:

1. After the thesis and examining committee form is submitted to SGS 6 weeks prior to the defence, we will then send out the thesis to the Chair and all committee members with a conflict of interest link to ensure that all members acknowledge any conflict of interest.
2. If supervisors or graduate program directors wishes to have examining committee members disclose their conflict of interest prior to submitting the thesis to SGS, they can circulate the Conflict of Interest form to all committee members and have them complete it. If they choose this option, your supervisor will then submit the thesis, examining committee form, and all conflict of interest forms to SGS 6 weeks prior to the defence. SGS will not include the link to the conflict of interest form with the thesis when it is sent out to the Chair and Examining Committee members.