Machu Picchu rainbow

Isabel Burgess

Class of 2020
Isabel holding Dartmouth pennant

About 

Hey there! I'm Isabel, a '20 from the sunny town of Tucson, Arizona. I spend most of my time at the Dartmouth Engineering, but you can also spot me hanging out with plants and my twin brother in the greenhouse, snapping photos of picturesque Hanover, or drinking iced coffee even during the winter (Arizona habits die hard). I'm an undergraduate advisor for the North Park housing community as well as a member of the marching band, Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineers, and Club Swim.

Academic Program 

Engineering, Studio Art, Spanish

Favorite Thing Right Now 

My new houseplant: Gerald the cactus

Hometown 

Tucson, Arizona

Pronouns 

she/her/hers

You are here

Isabel's D-Plan

What's a D-Plan?

    • FallHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: 3D Design & Digital Fabrication

      This special topics class taught Adobe Illustrator and the CAD software Rhino 3D. We laser cut, 3D-printed, and used the CNC router to cut huge sheets of plywood to make pavilion structures. My group made an 11 foot tall pineapple structure that now sits in House Center A .

    • WinterHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Expository Writing: The View from the Balcony: Learning How You Learn

      This is the one class that Professor Merton teaches each year and it is well worth it just for her. The texts are transformative and lend themselves to self reflection and better learning in all aspects of life. The expertly planned assignments helped me become a much better writer.

    • SpringHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Introduction to Scientific Computing

      ENGS 20 with Professor Taylor is taught in a "flipped classroom" style where one watches mini-lectures before class and works on coding projects during class. Students are assumed to have no coding experience coming into this class and are taught the basics of C and Matlab languages.

    • SummerTucson, AZ

      I went home for the summer, enjoyed the sun, swam nearly everyday, and worked for Cocina Verify, a startup company that verifies food safety in restaurants in Latin America.

    • FallCusco, Peru

      Favorite Class: Introduction to Hispanic Studies III: 20th - 21st Centuries

      The Peru LSA+ for Spanish is one of the defining moments of my Dartmouth career. We pet llamas, hiked in extraordinarily beautiful places, visited Machu Picchu, and read amazing Peruvian literature, my favorite of which is Rosa Cuchillo by Oscar Colchado Lucio.

    • WinterHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Drawn to Resist: The Latin American Comics with Liniers

      My favorite class ever! Taught by the renowned Argentine comic artist Liniers, we looked at Latin American comics through time and were exposed to history and many variations of the Spanish language.

    • SpringHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Sustainable Design

      ENGS 44 teaches the basics of sustainable building design. Throughout the course we designed tiny homes for varying applications and went on several field trips around the Upper Valley, including a visit to a straw-bale insulated home in Vermont.

    • SummerHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Architecture I

      My class designed a range of installations for the Dartmouth Organic Farm, including small buildings, amphitheaters, and comprehensive pathway systems. We went on a site visit to the Organic Farm and had weekly lessons for the software Rhino 3D.

    • FallHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Introduction to Environmental Engineering

      ENGS 37 is a chill engineering class that covers diverse technologies for water and air treatment, risk assessment, design for the environment, life-cycle assessment of a product, and other related topics. We also had one week of field trips during class!

    • WinterTucson, AZ

      I spent my winter off-term enjoying the Arizona weather at home and working remotely for a FinTech startup based in New York. It was nice to have some time to reflect on my Dartmouth experience thus far and refocus for the future.

    • SpringHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Structural Analysis

      I took ENGS 71 with Vicki May, one of my favorite Thayer professors. The course covers modeling and approximation of structural systems, for example calculating the type, dimension, and layout of beams to properly support a roof with certain applied loads.

    • SummerBeverly, MA

      This summer I worked for Build Health International, a non-profit that designs, builds, and equips healthcare infrastructure in low-resource settings. I worked on initial design for a hospital in Rwanda and researched germicidal UV lamps at hospitals in Haiti.

    • FallHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Sacred Architecture of Asia

      In ARTH 38.01 we learned about Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic architecture as well as Asian funerary architecture. Professor Hockley taught us the basics of religious thought and introduced us to many fabulous structures.

    • WinterHanover, NH

      Favorite Class: Modern Architecture

      Modern Architecture, taught by Professor Heck, starts in the mid-18th century with Neoclassicism and ends with the expansion of the 'International Style' post WWII.

    • SpringTucson, AZ

      I am taking Glaciology, Reproductive Ethics, and Machos & Malinches (Gender and Sexual Identities in Latin/x American Literature and Culture) remotely this spring term.

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One year ago...

My Spanish LSA+ (advanced language study abroad) in Peru came up for what seems to be the millionth time at a recent club swim dinner. One of our new team members, a veteran in the class of ’22, inquired about my trip. I always have a lot to say about it: I consider my LSA+ to be one of the defining parts of my college experience. 

In honor of the anniversary of my off-campus adventure, here are nine pictures from Peru and nine ways my LSA+ changed my life:

  1. No. 1

    I grew so much as a Spanish speaker

    Rainbow Mountain in Peru

    My reading and listening comprehension improved exponentially, I confronted some of my common grammar mistakes through writing essays, and I became less afraid to speak to others with less-than-perfect Spanish. I feel like a huge part of the world has opened up to me now that I understand Spanish, and that is incredibly exciting. 

  2. No. 2

    I realized how Eurocentric education is in the U.S.

    Machu Picchu rainbow

    The Incans were geniuses. Traditional social structures of Andean living even before that (look up "ayllu") functioned so well that it's amazing that I'd never heard of them before. But of course, the class that everyone has to take in high school is AP European History, not "AP Peruvian History."

  3. No. 3

    Peruvian literature is amazing

    Cusco, Peru

    We were lucky enough to have a Peruvian literature class with a well-known local author, and he introduced us to texts that helped us to understand past and present-day Peru. I highly suggest Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa. Finishing Rosa Cuchillo by Óscar Colchado has been on my bucket list since I read selected chapters for class while on break in the Amazon. 

  4. No. 4

    I am very aware of how I am perceived as a woman in the U.S. versus in Peru

    Isabel's host siblings

    This is more of a two-hour conversation subject, but having a host mom ask your friend why she's going to college if she's just going to marry and have kids is very telling of gender roles in Peru. It was also weird to have my host dad tell me that he could "trust Dartmouth women to keep ourselves safe because we were much more mature and 'with it' than Peruvian girls of our same age." I've thought about and discussed this topic a great deal since returning to campus.

  5. No. 5

    I gained an appreciation for potable and hot water

    Fishing at Amantaní

    In Peru, tap water is not safe to drink. It's a pain to have to buy bottled water all the time, but even more a pain to have to deal with the public health effects of dirty water. It's also amazing that we get on demand hot water with good pressure in our dorms here in Hanover. Showers were much more finicky in Peru. 

  6. No. 6

    I had the opportunity to take a class with Liniers

    llama

    When I came back to Dartmouth in the winter, I was at the right point along the Spanish minor track that I could take a class with Liniers (Profe Siri), one of the most famous comic artists from South America. It turned out to be one of my favorite classes, as I was exposed to the diversity of the Spanish language and joined in on the glee my good friend from El Salvador had from taking a class with the creator of a comic strip she had grown up reading. 

  7. No. 7

    I will never complain about slow Wi-Fi ever again

    Maras, Peru

    Peruvian Wi-Fi is pretty bad. Many times I couldn't get a video to load on Youtube. We usually went to cafes to get better Wi-Fi. Dartmouth could not function as it currently does on Peruvian WI-Fi. Uploading the pictures for this blog post would have been near impossible. I'm very thankful for the fast speeds here.

  8. No. 8

    New music!

    Uros

    Discoteca music is so fun. Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi, Bad Bunny... 'nuff said. 

  9. No. 9

    My friend became my best friend

    Isabel and Erica on Rainbow Mountain

    I met Erica in Spanish 9. We did our final project together, but I wouldn't have called us good friends at that point. Going to Peru cemented our friendship. We looked after one another and walked home from school together (an hour long walk) many days. She had to be hospitalized in the U.S. for amoebic dysentery, salmonella, and a secondary infection in the middle of the program, but didn't let that stop her from coming back and getting the most out of our LSA+. I'm pretty sure our friendship will last a lifetime and it all started with our adventures in Peru.

Posted 11/6/2018 at 1:00 PMAll List Posts

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