Students and former students are permitted to request a name change for a previously published thesis or dissertation. It is not necessary to specify a reason. Any reason is acceptable.

Requirements:

• The applicant must have already successfully changed their name within the UMKC Office of Registrar's before applying for name change of a published thesis or dissertation.
• The name change application must originate from the author and not a third party.
• The applicant must submit payment of a processing fee.

Constraints:

• The thesis or dissertation may only be modified to reflect a legal name change of the author.
• The applicant is permitted to change the name as needed throughout most portions of the thesis or dissertation (e.g., the title page, within the author’s “Vita” section, etc.). However, the applicant is not permitted to change names within the bibliography unless the applicant has already executed a name change with the repository that maintains the cited reference.
• No other portions of the document may be changed for any purpose. For example, the applicant is not permitted to fix typographical or printer errors, add or remove any written content, update figures or tables, etc. All those types of corrections should be dealt with by using an errata submission to maintain the academic integrity of the publication.

Limitations:

• The name change will affect only the version of the thesis or dissertation held on file in the ProQuest and MOSpace databases. It is possible that other databases have pulled information from ProQuest or MOSpace prior to the name change or that other authors have already cited the work in such a way as to include the original name of the author. With current technology, it is not possible to automatically propagate the name change to those other databases or citations. Therefore, we strongly recommend that—in addition to filing a name change request—the applicant should also submit an errata page to ProQuest to document the name change.

Procedure:

• The applicant must fill out a form (available from the School of Graduate Studies).
• When submitting the form, the applicant must provide a fully corrected PDF of the thesis or dissertation along with payment of a processing fee.
• UMKC will review the corrected PDF to ensure compliance with the above listed requirements and constraints and then UMKC will interface with ProQuest and MOSpace to execute the document update on the applicant’s behalf.

The applicant will receive notification that the application has been received and will receive notification when the update has been executed.