“SUNScholar is open to receive new nominations for the December 2024 graduation period.”

That was the opening line for every graduation period.  This year is no different, except now it has a new name, face and place.  The submission of theses and dissertations for graduation has moved to SUNStudent Academia.

The nomination for students to submit a thesis or dissertation for graduation now takes place on Thesis Management.

Thesis Management sits under the tab for Examinations, yet it has nothing to do with examinations.  For each functionality, Examinations and Thesis Management, it is two totally different, and separate processes and therefore two different outcomes.

During the process of Examinations, the thesis or dissertation has yet to be examined and reviewed.  In Thesis Management only the final revised thesis or dissertation needs to be uploaded.  This is the copy following examination, and after all corrections have been made.  This is also the copy that will be available on SUNScholar.

The User Guide for Thesis Management is available here.

For the most part, the workflow for Thesis management hasn’t changed.

To summarise the process:

  1. The final revised document must be submitted in PDF format.
  2. Log onto SUNStudent Academia.
  3. Click on Examinations, then click Thesis Management.
  4. The supervisor/promoter or administrative staff nominates the candidate.
  5. The thesis/dissertation is uploaded by the supervisor/promoter or administrative staff.
  6. The supervisor/promoter or administrative staff approves the submission.
  7. The thesis/dissertation will be publicly accessible on SUNScholar following graduation.

Due to the sensitive nature of security and ongoing enhancements to Thesis Management, the upload/submission of the final revised thesis or dissertation, must be done by the supervisor/promoter or administrative staff.

The final date for the submission of theses or dissertations for the December 2024 graduation is 28 November 2024.

Changes in the process

  • The Thesis Management function will remain open throughout the year.
  • It is compulsory for all master’s and doctoral students to complete this process for graduation.
  • Students will not be uploading any documents; this will be the responsibility of the nominator.
  • The process of nomination, submission and approval/rejection will take place on the same screen/programme.
  • The manual input of the student number will give a dropdown box of ALL postgraduate students within the faculty, ensure you ‘pick’ the correct student from the dropdown box.
  • The manual input of the supervisor/promotor staff number will give a dropdown box of ALL supervisors/promotors within the faculty, ensure you ‘pick’ the correct supervisor/promotor from the dropdown box.
  • Incorrect uploading of document(s) cannot be replaced after the submission process, so the process of nomination needs to be cancelled.
  • Only a cumulative maximum of 250 MB can be uploaded per student. Exceeding this threshold requires the user to send the document(s) to scholar@sun.ac.za.
  • Uploaded documents will remain visible to the staff member who did the nomination.
  • The discretion and security of uploaded documents remain with the department.
  • Thesis management will be ‘wiped’ clean after each graduation period.
  • The embargo period only goes up to three years. For extensions or moving from embargo to open access and vice versa, an email must be sent to scholar@sun.ac.za  to manually make the changes.  These changes will not be reflected in Thesis Management.

What remains

The recommendations and look and feel of the thesis document remain the same.  Such as the new SU title page, declaration page(s), abstract(s) and typesetting.  See the library help page, Thesis/Dissertation submission for templates.

Requesting Access to SUNStudent

Access will only be granted to SU staff and with the approval of their line manager.  Any user requesting access must get their line manager’s approval for the request to be processed.

Your access can be provisioned by following these steps:

  1. Please access the SUNStudent Service Desk here
  2. The tile marked “user access management” is the section that allows users to complete their user role access request

For enquiries about theses/dissertations submissions, please contact Paulette Talliard or scholar@sun.ac.za.