Hey there! I'm Isabel, a '20 from the sunny town of Tucson, Arizona. I spend most of my time at the Thayer School of 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.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I awaken to the smooth beat of Paul Desmond’s Bossa Antigua. It’s time to get ready for a productive day. The sun is shining and I feel great.
9:30 AM
I leave my room and head over to Baker-Berry Library to get my iced coffee from KAF (King Arthur Flour). I realize two minutes after I walk out the door that I have forgotten my reusable cup. I head back to my room to grab it.
9:35 AM
I am now back on my way to the library with my cup in hand. At KAF if you bring your own cup you save $.25 on your order and have a chance at getting your drink free of charge if you are the 10th customer in a row to bring your own cup.
9:42 AM
It’s sophomore summer so the KAF line is short. I now have my iced coffee and bacon scone. I unfortunately did not win the free drink today. Hopefully I’ll get one in the near future.
My breakfast: a KAF iced coffee and pastry (my environmentally-friendly reusable cup sadly not pictured)
11:30 AM - 12:35 PM
I go to Thayer for my first class, ENGS 24: Science of Materials. We are learning about phase diagrams and I don’t quite understand what’s happening, but I plan on hitting up all the TA hours this week to figure it out.
12:50 PM - 1:55 PM
I move downstairs for my second class, ENGS 33: Solid Mechanics. ENGS 33 is great because A) the classroom is warmer than the one for ENGS 24 so I don’t have to wear my sweater and B) because we get to build bridges out of laser cut plywood as our term project.
2:05 PM
While walking over to Collis for lunch I see someone who looks like my friend Che and almost call out to him, but I realize in the nick of time that he is not Che, but is wearing the exact same shirt. I eat delicious stir fry for lunch.
3:30 - 4:30 PM
I’m back at Thayer for my ENGS 24 Lab. We learn about thermocouples and get introduced to the scanning electron microscope (SEM). I love the SEM -- I never want to part from this piece of technology that has remarkable resolution at less than a nanometer scale, but alas, I must.
Ebrahim, an Engineering B.E. student, using the Scanning Electron Microscope
5:30 - 7:00 PM
I swim in the lap pool at Alumni Gym for Club Swim practice. It’s a great way to cool off.
7:16 PM
Club Swim takes FoCo (Class of ’53 Commons, our dining hall) for dinner. We attempt to avoid the throngs of middle school girls who are here for lacrosse camp.
11:00 PM
I hit up Novack (part of the library) to get a few hours in on my problem sets that are due Friday. I am definitely going to need help on my ENGS 24 problem set. But that’s what TAs are for! I didn’t come to Dartmouth for things to be easy.
1:00 AM
I leave Novack. The night air is refreshing.
1:30 AM
I go to bed and prepare myself to go to Architecture class the next day. The grind never ends.
