Yes, if your committee agrees first. The ODU Graduate School treats AI as a possible tool for both the research and the finished thesis or dissertation, and it puts the decision with the student's committee. If the committee says yes and you use the tool, you disclose it in the acknowledgments. The rule is a short section of the Graduate School's thesis and dissertation preparation and submission guide, which carries no date; we read it on November 9, 2026.
If your AI statement clearly doesn't cover what you describe elsewhere in your thesis, Esmond points it out.
The whole rule is three sentences under the heading Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), placed between the copyright instructions and the submission procedures. It opens with a permission: “AI may be an appropriate tool for completion of thesis/dissertation research and the written document that results.”
The condition follows in the next sentence: “Use of AI must be approved for use by the student’s committee and, if used, it should be disclosed in the acknowledgments’ section of the thesis/dissertation.” So the default at ODU is a question to your committee. Ask your committee first, before you use Esmond or any other AI tool on your thesis or dissertation, and disclose the use if they agree.
The third sentence is about format. For examples of how to word an acknowledgment of AI, the Graduate School refers students to journal manuscript guidelines and to manuscript preparation manuals, and it names the APA guide as one of them. It does not give its own template.
A hypothetical example of a commentChapter 4 reports 212 usable survey responses, but the abstract and Table 3 both give 198. Which count is correct, and are the 14 excluded responses explained anywhere in the methods?
A first comment on one part of your own draft, right away and without an account.
Get a free previewODU's text is brief, so the table below separates what the guide says from what we suggest you keep. The right column is our suggestion, not an ODU requirement.
| Step | What the ODU guide asks | What to have ready (our suggestion) |
|---|---|---|
| Before you use a tool | Committee approval of the AI use | A short description of the tool and the task, sent to your thesis or dissertation director |
| While you work | Nothing beyond the approved use | Dated notes of which chapters or files went through the tool |
| Final document | Disclosure in the acknowledgments, if AI was used | Wording based on your style manual or a journal's AI statement |
| Committee reading and defense | Final approval is given only on the completed document | The approval message, in case a member asks |
The acknowledgments belong to the preliminary pages of an ODU thesis, which carry Roman numeral page numbers and come before the table of contents. That is where the Graduate School wants the disclosure, so a note in a methods chapter alone would not meet the rule.
The guide leaves the wording to you. Journal statements on AI use name the tool, say what it did, and say which parts of the work it touched. If your department follows APA, its guidance on describing generative AI use is the example the Graduate School points to. Your graduate program director can tell you whether the program expects a particular format.
ODU accepts two formats: a monograph, and a manuscript-based document in which a narrative main body tells the story of the project and refers to separately publishable manuscripts presented as appendices. In the second format, AI use can show up in two places. A published or submitted article may carry its own AI statement, written to that journal's rules. The thesis as a whole still needs the acknowledgment the Graduate School asks for, and the committee's approval covers the thesis.
Check that the two layers agree. If an article's statement says a tool helped with language, the acknowledgments of the full document should not describe a narrower use, and the committee should know about both.
A rule from the references section of the same guide matters more once AI tools are involved: “All textual citations must be referenced and must be from sources the student has actually used.” General background reading goes in a separate subsection at the end of the reference list.
AI tools are known to suggest references that look plausible and do not exist, or that say something other than what the tool claims. Under the ODU rule, a source a tool listed and you never opened has no place in the reference list. Before submission, trace every entry back to a copy you read.
ODU's Information Technology Services set data rules on the page for MonarchMind, the university's AI hub. Next to the data allowed in that hub, the page lists data that should not go into any AI tool: student education records under FERPA, personally identifiable information, protected health information, payment card data, export-controlled information and financial privacy data.
In a thesis this mainly concerns the data rather than the chapters. Interview transcripts with names, health records or identifiable survey answers stay out of AI tools. A chapter that quotes such material falls under the same rule, so remove the identifying details first or ask your director how to handle it.
This example is made up. A doctoral student in coastal engineering is preparing a manuscript-based dissertation with three articles. Her committee approved an AI tool for debugging the simulation code behind the third article. The second article, already published, ends with a journal statement saying a tool helped with language editing. Her acknowledgments mention only the code. The committee approved one use and reads about another inside an appendix, and the acknowledgments match neither in full. One message to the committee before the defense, and one extra sentence in the acknowledgments, would have closed the gap.
Esmond evaluates every assignment before you submit. It never writes it.
Esmond is an AI tool that doesn't write for you. If your course doesn't allow any AI tools, don't use Esmond for that work. If you're unsure, ask your instructor or advisor.
At ODU the committee decides, so ask your committee before you use Esmond on any chapter, and name Esmond in the acknowledgments if they agree. Esmond evaluates the content of a draft from within your field and points out factual errors, inconsistencies between chapters and blind spots in the argument; how Esmond works and the sample report show what you would get back. Keep identifiable participant data out of what you upload, in line with the ODU data rules above, and see whether you can use Esmond for the general question. Old Dominion University has not reviewed or approved Esmond.
No. The Graduate School says AI may be an appropriate tool for thesis and dissertation research and the document. Your committee has to approve the use first.
The student's committee. You can raise it with your thesis or dissertation director first, but the approval belongs to the committee.
In the acknowledgments section, if you used AI. For wording, the Graduate School points to journal guidelines and manuals such as the APA guide.
The guide names no exception for small uses. Ask your committee whether they want to approve and see a disclosure for language tools too.
Read on November 9, 2026.
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