Thesis and Independent Study Instructions for
Blue Marble University and All Divisions Including:
Blue Marble University
Blue Marble University Medical School
Blue Marble University Law School
Panama College of Cell Science
Effective February 8, 2026
Use of AI Required
The following instructions and requirements apply to all dissertations and Independent Study papers at all levels: Bachelor Degrees, Master’s Degrees, and Doctoral Degrees. All of our programs gave you writing experience. A dissertation or independent study paper is nothing more than a more extensive paper that you have already become accustomed to writing. So do not make more of this than it is. All papers should have a goal of no more than 20 pages including references. Try to shoot for this and do not worry of your go over. But long winded, rambling, poorly focused papers will not be permitted.
Keep your topic and title very tight and small. Do not make this a big project that cannot be accomplished. Your Instructor/Mentor will give you terrific guidance on this.
Part A: Using AI to Create Superior Works
The University position on students using AI has been previously publicly posted: https://bluemarbleuniversity.com/ai-required-for-dissertations-at-blue-marble-university/
Using AI for assistance in creating and writing a dissertation or independent study paper will yield superior papers in every respect: deeper, better organized, and yielding results and considerations that others can build on. Your Instructor/Mentor will assist you in how to go about using AI from selecting a hot thesis topic to outlining and collecting recent and cogent references.
Here at Blue Marble University, we do not consider the use of AI to be plagiarism. Rather, we consider AI to be a tool to make research deeper, writing better, and more intellectual in every respect. We think a graduate student should make use of AI to the fullest extent possible in creating dissertations and research reports. In any future employment, use of AI for everything will be mandatory! Your supervisor wants a report about something, they want it tomorrow. Research reports? You are not going to take your sweet time to create one…It is due in 3 days!!! Anyone not using AI is not going to be fully productive. This is our new philosophy and we know we are right.
With proper “prompts” telling AI what to do, you can bang out a complete very high quality and informative 20 page thesis with references in 1-2 weeks, although of course you will need more time to understand AI, and this is not a race…it is a work-up that contributes to your field, rather than a 100-200 page writing that sits in a college basement that no one ever sees or reads.
The way to go about this, is to use Chatgpt, Gemini, and/or Grok, (or other AI that may come into play in the future) to do the following: (i.e. AI does the following based on your prompts, not you. All you do is tell it AI what to do)
1. Suggest a title for a relevant and recent advance within the field of _________.
2. Now, please prepare a research report including a list of references that discusses the implication of and usefulness of _______ (Here, you insert one of the title topics obtained from above)
3. Please now restructure this research material in the usual format for submission for publication, that is, in the usual format: (Again, you do not do this, you require AI to do this)
Title
Author
Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results and Discussion Conclusion
List of References numbered in order of appearance in text.
Using AI is not at all about being lazy and letting AI do the heavy lifting…it is about using AI applications and tools to deliver better, deeper, better written, more useful information and written reports in a shorter time.
Here is a a video that talks about how to use AI. It is excellent. And will give you guidance about writing “prompts” which tell AI what to do:
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Part B: Background and General Requirements
[You can’t use AI if you don’t know where you are going!]
Students Please Take Special Note: We are not your spell checkers nor grammar checkers. Dissertations with errors in spelling or grammar will be rejected. Please use Grammarly or some other automated spell/grammar checker, or enlist the services of a personal editor, such as AI.
1. Purpose: The purpose of the dissertation segment of our program is for you to demonstrate you are able to think independently, and write as a professional in the particular field. Be thinking about the normal form of a research paper, many of which we have presented in your various courses. This applies as well to Independent Study or other major papers across all programs.
2. Subject: This of course depends on your particular course, program, or field of endeavor.
The main thing is that whatever you choose, even if you just are doing a review, there must be some original ideas or thoughts that:
(a) clarify or extend current thinking and/or
(b) clearly demonstrate you have become and expert respecting the inquiry.(i.e. that others can build upon your work).
3. Your Beginning Thoughts-Step 1 Prepare your Outline: Before you start to do anything, you will have to construct a “roadmap” for your thesis. This evolves during discussion with your thesis advisor or mentor. Some exploratory research will be required of you to ensure that your thesis contains new material or thought. Therefore, you will need to prepare an Outline for your thesis, which should include:
(A) The current state of the art or science as you see it (based of course on a thorough literature review which should be incorporated into the introductory portion of the thesis)
(B) How your study or review will further clarify or extend the thinking in this regard
(C) Is your proposal lab based in part?? If not, a literature review must be significant so as to serve as the basis of other investigators using the material as a starting point to design further experiments. Same for non-science oriented subjects.
4. Form: Your manuscript must be delivered in PDF form, as well as text format, such as Word (docx).
5. Contents: We have taught the general format of a published research papers and the parts involved, order of parts, referencing formats etc. Please find a research paper or review from an established journal in your field of endeavor to use as your guide. Your dissertation or Independent Study should typically follow the following order:
* Title
* Author
* Author’s complete address and contact information including, if appropriate, Hospital, Institute, Research Center, or University, address, phone, e-mail.
* Summary (Usually called: “Abstract”
* Introduction: EVERY Introduction must end with this sentence or similar: The purpose of this paper is_______________
* Materials and Methods (Many times for non-lab research changed to just Methods): Here you tell how you went about researching for your paper.
* Results
* Discussion (Sometimes, Results and Discussion may be combined)
* Conclusion: Every Conclusion paragraph must end with this sentence or similar: This paper is important in that____________; or, This paper demonstrates ________________.
* No Footnotes are permitted. An important note can be included in References.
* References: Arrange numerically in the order cited in the text, with text notations like this: (3)
* Last Section: Author Bio, brief with photo, some Journals require this, see samples: SampleAuthorprofiles
6. Special requirements for images: Your thesis or paper should include images to make it interesting. All images of tables, diagrams, figures, photos etc. INCLUDING THEIR LEGENDS, should be in PDF or JPEG format only. Most of your computer software should allow you to explain or describe the item in the “caption” section. This would be helpful so that you don’t have a lot of orphan items floating around. And PLEASE be sure your images are high quality!!! We do not want blurry images and diagrams etc!!!! Be sure you use large file sizes, because, for example, a 100 KB image will never likely be sufficient quality when converted to pdf. Images should have a minimum size of 500KB and 150-300 dpi resolution. You may need to experiment with your set-up to see what you can achieve.
7. Publication Plan: You should be thinking about a publication plan. Staff will assist with this and will suggest submission targets. All dissertations are required to be published. Independent Studies may be published, with further Faculty guidance.
8. Cover Pages. This is VERY important. You must have proper Heading/Cover. Papers must be publication ready.
Typically, you will need to supply two cover pages, one for your dissertation, and one for publication.
Sample Thesis Cover Page for the University, be sure to reference your particular division: SampleThesisCoverPage
Sample Heading Page for Publication Submission. Be sure again to reference your particular university/college: SampleHeadingForPublication
Sample Heading 2 for Publication: Sample2HeadingForPublication
Appendix: How to Handle References
Article in Periodical or Journal: Testa, G., Borghese, L., Steinbeck, J. A., and Brustle, O. Breakdown of the Potentiality Principle and Its Impact on Global Stem Cell Research. Cell Stem Cell (2007) 1:153-156.
Article in a Book: Abramoff, P. and La Vie, M.F.P., in Biology of the Immune Response, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, (1970), p.136.
Online Scholarly Journal:
For all online scholarly journals, provide the author(s) name(s), the name of the article in quotation marks, the title of the publication in italics, all volume and issue numbers, and the year of publication. Include a URL, DOI, or permalink to help readers locate the source.
Article in an Online-only Scholarly Journal (Website with Author)
If the journal you are citing appears exclusively in an online format (i.e. there is no corresponding print publication) that does not make use of page numbers, indicate the URL or other location information.
For Example:
Rosado-Erazo, Igneris, “How To Treat Patients With Adult Stem Cells Without Specific FDA Approval And Without The Necessity Of Conducting Any Prior Clinical Trial”, J.Drake Biomedical Institute, 6 December 2016, drakebiomedicalinstitute.wordpress.com/list-of-published-works/
Accessed December 6, 2016
Other Website with No Author:
Note: Depending on the content, credible websites do not always include authors. Example:
“Website Article.” Website Title. Website Publisher, Date Month Year Published. Web. Date Month Year Accessed.
Date Accessed: This is the day the article was read and found. Example:
“India.” Travel.State.Gov. Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Feb 17, 2010. Web.
Accessed May 4, 2010.
Personal Communication:
Personal Communication includes: private letters, memos, some electronic communication (i.e. email or messages from non-archived discussion groups), personal interviews, telephone conversations, etc.
These types of communication are not recoverable data and therefore should not be included on the Reference page. Cite personal communications in text only.
Example:
Mark Johnson says… (personal communication, April 15, 2010)
(Terry O’Kelly, personal communication, June 6, 2009)
Personal Interview:
Personal interview by phone Structure:
Soriano, A. (2008, April 5). Telephone interview.
Personal interview by email Structure:
Soriano, A. (2008, April 5). Email interview.
Personal interview in person Structure:
Soriano, A. (2008, April 5). Personal interview.
Further Citation formats can be found as either APA style: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
or as MLA style: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
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OK, you are not going alone…we are here to help and guide you every step of the way. Your advisors and instructors will be very helpful, and our goal is for everyone to complete their paper and get published. But PLEASE, study these instructions so that you and we can have intelligent discussions about your project, which we hope will end up being an exciting part of our program for you!
As always, thank you so much for your efforts!
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