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.
Baker-Berry Library is full of gems: KAF, the Orozco Mural room, the Tower room, the checkered floor of Baker lobby, and, of course, all sorts of books from all over the world. But Baker-Berry would not be complete without the Book Arts Workshop. Nestled beneath Baker lobby and to the west of the mural room, the Book Arts Workshop provides a space where print tradition is kept alive and well.
Through the left door is the Orozco mural room, and to the right is the Book Arts Workshop.
The Book Arts Workshop, according to its website, "offer[s] the unique opportunity to work with historical equipment through traditional and contemporary methods. Not only can you explore the arts and history of bookbinding, printing and typography, but [you can] also express your ideas and research in tangible form."
The Book Arts Workshop holds Letterpress Orientation once or twice a term. Once you get oriented, you can work in the studio during Open Studio hours on nearly any project you want. If you want to get even more involved, you might consider working (for pay) for the Book Arts Studio! My friend, Iliana '20, has worked there since freshman year.
The Book Arts Studio took over an old phone booth to create a typewriter corner, where people can write tiny stories.
I have not attended Letterpress Orientation, but I have visited the studio for class projects as well as Workshop events. For my Writing 5 class freshman winter, we typeset and printed a class poem on a very long piece of paper. Each student in my class had one sentence in the poem, taken from an assignment we had done on the first day of class to describe sensory components of our homes. My line was "where my brother's dad jokes are worse than my dad's dad jokes," except I messed up the apostrophes when setting the type. I used a single open quotation mark by accident, so the curve is in the wrong direction. Oops!
During finals my freshman winter, one of the Workshop instructors came around the library with a very small orange press. I forgot about my stress for a moment while I made a very tiny print on the orange press. It reads "tiny little orange press". I absolutely love the little print. It's the cutest thing and has been on my wall ever since I got it.
My Writing 5 class poem, a Book Arts advertisement, my tiny orange press print, and a Valentine's Day-themed print given to me by Iliana.
The poster I printed during Winter Carnival.
I recently went to the Book Arts Studio to make a poster for Winter Carnival. We used the large press that you can see in the right of the top photo! I donned an apron, rolled ink on the press, put my paper on, and cranked it in and out of the press. The print is so beautiful I plan to have it framed.
Other print examples on display.
The Book Arts Studio will forever have a place in my heart. It adds a sense of magic and a richness to Baker-Berry library. It is one of the things that sets Dartmouth apart from the rest. If you are interested in learning more about the Book Arts Studio, check out the link here.
Prospective-student me certainly was curious about Dartmouth's liberal arts curriculum, especially how I would decide on my three classes each term. Come learn about my sophomore fall term classes!
At Dartmouth, you have a unique opportunity to talk to really, really cool people. And, if they're not coming via official Dartmouth programming, you can invite your own speaker!
Even in a pandemic, I've had opportunities to work in theater this term, and I'm extremely grateful for what it's taught me. (Photo by Russell Chai '24)
