Hi, my name is Liliana (or Lili, for short) and I'm a '26 from Hawaiʻi! On campus, I can be found performing with my dance troupe, going on walks with friends, and spending an excessive amount of time in Collis. I also love collectible stickers, ultra-specific playlists, free verse poetry, and iced tea. Excited to share my Dartmouth journey with you all! :-)
The Undead South: Horror and Haunting in U.S. Southern Literature explores the southern gothic trope in books, television programs, films, and even video games! This is an upper-level English course, so many of my peers were upperclassmen majoring in English. Despite this, the professor, Professor Taylor, made the space so inviting! I wrote my final paper on hospitality in the American South, where I had the opportunity to engage Get Out (film, 2017), Swamplandia! (book, 2011), and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (video game, 2017). I'd highly recommend taking this horror-themed course in the fall, when the leaves change and there's a certain spooky Halloween chill in the air!
Gender Topics in Native American Life taught me so much about indigenous communities other than my own! Professor Powell was so knowledgeable about the topic, and I especially enjoyed how she encouraged students to lead discussions and drive the conversation. My favorite part of this course was my final project, where I synthesized art pieces from indigenous Pacific Islanders outside the gender binary (māhū, in the Hawaiian language)!
Paris in the 19th Century was my first-year seminar! In this course, Professor O'Rourke taught us how to truly examine Parisian art from this era. Having no experience in art history, I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to understand how special the art pieces were – but, I can confidently say that I want to visit Paris now. At the end of the course, we each gave a presentation! Mine was on Mary Cassatt and her portrayal of the upper-class female experience. Her Impressionist art was so beautiful, from her pieces on motherhood, to friendship, to liberation.
SummerOʻahu, HI and Atlanta, GA
I spent the summer after my first year at home with friends and family! People really mean it when they say that your first year of college goes by in a flash. When I wasn't working part time at a local coffee shop, I visited Kauaʻi, lounged at the beach, saw The 1975 in concert, welcomed the new ʻ27s from Hawaiʻi, and was a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding! In July, I also had the opportunity to intern in Atlanta, GA with College Horizons, a non-profit dedicated to helping more indigenous students enroll in & graduate from college. I attended their program for high schoolers back in 2021, and this time I helped run the program itself! I'm so grateful to College Horizons for such a wonderful experience.
Sociological Classics is exactly what it sounds like. We read some of the most fundamental sociologists, like Marx, Durkheim, Du Bois, and Weber. Professor Dixon was easygoing and approachable - I remember on the first day of class, we introduced ourselves and he asked us to share "what we're watching". (I think he was looking for some new show recommendations!) From the start, I loved this course and looked forward to it every time we met. I also loved that we didn't have a final...just a project! I finished mine on the couch at home!
Introduction to Environmental Science was actually held in the same classroom as Sociological Classics, so I instantly knew I'd love this class. Dr. Chaudhary and Dr. Peach co-taught this course – I enjoyed having two professors because their teaching styles were different, but they worked together well! Having taken an environmental science class in high school, I was worried that some of the content would sound too familiar, but I was wrong. I learned so much in this course about not only the fundamentals of environmental science, but sustainability, economics, social justice, and different cultures around the world. Dr. Peach was also my faculty of choice for Dartmouth's "take your professor to a Pine lunch" program!
Morality and Political Economy was my first government course beyond the intro classes, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous on the first day… but Dr. Clark has such a special way of making students feel at ease. His passion for this subject stuck out to me so much that I attended office hours after the very first class meeting—I had so many questions already! My favorite part of this course was how we got to engage with the Political Economy Project (or PEP, for short), of which Dr. Clark is the director! Throughout the term, we attended several PEP guest speaker events, which greatly enhanced the content we learned in class. From Abrahamic religious texts to modern-day criticisms of capitalism—this course was constantly teaching me about how people, throughout history and around the world, have attached moral significance to their economic activity.
This summer term, I am taking three courses: ENGS 21: Introduction to Engineering, FILM 47.01: Video Mashups, and GOVT 29: Leadership, Sex, and Gender in Business and Politics. This combination of courses is so exciting to me, primarily because they are all part of different disciplines: STEM, arts, and social sciences. I truly feel like I'm engaging with the liberal arts curriculum that Dartmouth prides itself on!
The point of a liberal arts curriculum is to encourage students to explore disciplines that they might not have otherwise been exposed to. Unlike schools with a larger focus on pre-professional majors, for example, Dartmouth has distributive and world culture requirements (see them here). For instance, a QDS (quantitative or deductive sciences) requirement could be fulfilled by a variety of courses, from MATH 3 (Calculus) to LING 1 (Introductory Linguistics).
My courses each fulfill a different distributive and world culture requirement, and are all quite unique from one another. ENGS 21, from the engineering sciences department, fulfills TAS (technology or applied science). FILM 47.01, from the film studies department, fulfills ART (art: creation, performance, history, or criticism). GOVT 29, from the government department, fulfills both SOC (social analysis) and CI (culture and identity). Although I've only been to a few classes so far, I hereby present to you an introduction to my courses for the term!
ENGS 21: Introduction to Engineering is my largest course in size, with about 50 students in the classroom. I have to admit - I was incredibly intimidated by this course, because I had only taken one course in the engineering department (ENGS 12!) before this one. Additionally, many students in the room are engineering sciences majors, as compared to my own human-centered design pursuits. I walked to the first class with some of my peers that I'd taken ENGS 12 with; many of them are studying human-centered design, like me, and I felt relieved that I wasn't alone! And, when Professor Goods spoke to us for the first time, I knew I'd enjoy this class. She completed a dual-degree program with Colby College and Dartmouth College - meaning she understands the academic rigor of a 10-week term. It's always appreciated when one of my professors can relate to us in this way!
So far, I've had the opportunity to work in a group to construct a hydraulic robot arm. ENGS 21 is incredibly group project-based, which is exciting! Collaboration is fundamental to engineering courses, and I find that the best ideas come from group brainstorming and group work. Looking ahead in the course, I'm excited to learn about market research, sustainable engineering, and the ethics of engineering! I suspect that this course will teach me a lot of new and necessary skills that I can apply to future human-centered design courses.
FILM 47.01: Video Mashups is so neat! I have never taken a film studies course at Dartmouth before, but I've always been interested in film and video production. (No, seriously. I use Letterboxd far too often than I'd like to admit.) The classroom is in Black Family Visual Arts Center, or BFVAC, as students often call it. I actually got a bit lost finding the room, as I've never had much reason to go into this building before this term! The course itself is so intriguing - we are learning how to recontextualize existing media and give them brand new meanings! To kick off the first class, Professor Ruoff played a few video mashups for us to watch and discuss. One of my favorites was a video edit of Winnie the Pooh clips, recontextualized to take place during the Vietnam War. Out of context, this sounds pretty bleak - but I promise you, the editing skills had me so enthralled.
Our first project in this course was to take a short clip from a non-English film and create subtitles in English—wildly wrong subtitles strongly encouraged. We were assigned to work with a partner, and my partner and I decided to edit a German movie. The subtitles were, of course, wildly wrong. We were pretty entertained by the process, despite running into some technical difficulties with Adobe Premiere Pro. At least I have the remainder of the term to become a pro at Pro!
Here's me, trying to learn Premiere Pro!
Finally, GOVT 29: Leadership, Sex, and Gender in Business and Politics is probably the course where I talk the most. This course is all about discussion in small groups about gender issues in the context of leadership positions! I'm really looking forward to learning more about people's thoughts and belief systems. What's really interesting about GOVT 29 is that it's cross-listed with the WGSS (Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies) department. Professor Brooks is super knowledgeable about topics from both departments, which I think makes for an excellent class environment. I also absolutely love that GOVT 29 also practices a flipped classroom format!
I'm most looking forward to our podcast project, which we will complete in groups. My peers all come from different backgrounds, and I think this will make for a really great mix of podcasts to listen to! I'm definitely interested in discussing how gender inequities and inequalities are affected by semantics and grammar rules in languages around the world.
In all, I've greatly enjoyed my classes so far, and I'm really looking forward to a productive summer term!
Exploring Chicago with my fellow women engineers from Dartmouth! We explored the city outside of the SWE conference and got to see how exciting Chicago can be.
In Solid Mechanics, we designed and constructed a bridge that held 10kN, around 1000kg! The process, from SOLIDWORKS design to laser cutting to gluing parts together, took us weeks, but it was one of the most rewarding projects I have ever done.
My first time in Chicago at the Society of Women Engineers Conference in Chicago, Illinois! Fully funded by Dartmouth, I had a great time meeting amazing companies and getting to know fellow women engineers.
