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.
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.
How to Do Tradition Right 101: Join the Marching Band
And now… the only band in the Ivy League that stores its freshmen in a pouch…
The Dartmouth College Marsupial Band!
Fall is football season, and that means it’s time for Marching Band! We just played our first game of the season against Georgetown, which the football team cleared out with a final score of 41-0. Home game wins are especially gleeful for the marching band because it means we get to march through the library. This time we surprised many a hard-working ’22 in the Tower room.
Hilda Friday '20, tenor sax and soon to be drum major, reflects on the view at our game against Georgetown.
The Dartmouth College Marching Band (DCMB) has been the keeper of College tradition since its birth in 1889, which makes us the oldest marching band in the Ivy League. We are some of the few students on campus who know the Dartmouth Tunes, or ‘DTs’ as we call them, which are football fight songs that have been around for a very long time.
Now the DCMB may not be what you picture a marching band is. We, as well as a number of other marching bands in the Ivy League, are what is called a ‘scatter band.' Because we are a small school, we do not have the number of people to march into large and complex shapes, so we simply scatter into formation during our shows while someone narrates over the loudspeaker. This allows us to have new short shows each week for pre-game and half-time in which we make fun of the opposing team.
We attend one away game each fall season. If we are visiting Columbia, we make sure to travel to Times Square to sing the Alma Mater. Later in the term during homecoming, the band alumni come back to march with us!
DCMB at the town of Hanover's Pond Party, held during Winter Carnival each year.
Once winter rolls around, we switch roles and turn into a pep band to support our basketball and ice hockey teams. I had never witnessed an ice hockey game before coming to Dartmouth, but let me tell you, they are quite exciting to watch. We form our own intramural hockey team called the ‘Ugly Pucklings’ each winter, and we always win*. During Winter Carnival we march on the frozen-over Occom Pond for the town of Hanover’s Pond Party. Surprisingly, only one casualty, a dented sousaphone, has occurred in years past due to the slippery terrain.
The pep band decked out in 'flair' at the Princeton Hockey game.
Pep band provides free entry to one of the most exciting sports events of the year: the Princeton hockey game.
The DCMB IM hockey team, the 'Ugly Pucklings'.
If you want to uphold tradition and make the best ‘M’ jokes the world has ever seen, hop on the bandwagon.
*The band always wins (but not actually during IM Hockey: we didn’t win a single game last year).
Growing up in New England and transitioning to living at Dartmouth, I'm all too familiar with the unpredictability (and beauty) of New England's weather. Let me tell you about it here!
This term was defined by its learning experiences and personal firsts, from snowsports to winter traditions. As I wait to board my flight back home for spring break, I reflect on the most memorable parts that made this term one of my favorites.
