Dartmouth has a distinctive year-round quarter system—the D-Plan—that enables students to customize their individual academic calendars across four years. Dartmouth offers four, 10-week academic terms per year that loosely align with the four seasons. Within some guidelines, students choose how—and where—they'll spend each of those terms, whether taking classes in Hanover, studying away on an off-campus program, or embarking on a "leave term" to pursue an internship, research, creative pursuit, or time off. Here, Alan Ngouenet '25 shares snapshots drawn from his D-Plan, organized by season.
FALL
During sophomore fall, I frequented farmers markets, hiked the nearby Gile Mountain trail, went for walks around Occom Pond, and picked apples from local orchards. I also began work at Dartmouth Engineering's MShop, an instructional workshop where students learn about computer numerical control (CNC) milling and other manufacturing essentials. To cap off an excellent term, I traveled to Germany and Poland as part of the Migration and Memory program, a three-week course taught jointly by the German Studies department and Jewish Studies program. There, we studied the lives and culture of Jewish communities prior to the 20th century and visited culturally significant sites. Junior fall, I served my community as an undergraduate advisor, or UGA—student leaders who support their fellow residents—for West House, one of Dartmouth's six residential house communities.
WINTER
After a delightfully busy first-year fall, I settled into Dartmouth for my first-year winter. I met some of my closest friends, tumbled down the end-of-season slush at the Dartmouth Skiway on a snowboard, and bonded with club basketball teammates on and off the court. Sophomore winter, I learned how to row and was welcomed by an amazing community during my brief stint as a walk-on to Dartmouth's team. I learned how to ski and leveled up from the greens to expert bowls in Park City. In my Computational Methods class, I learned about assumptions in models, interpolation, and approximation, which led me to learn more about industrial engineering. I explored an industry-specific topic while writing a paper on telecom network optimization in my Introduction to Operations Research class junior winter, and outside of the classroom, our club basketball team qualified for the National Club Basketball Association's regional tournament.
SPRING
During my junior spring, I interned at a biomedical engineering startup in southern New Hampshire, where I revised a device that helps tackle nerve damage complications from surgery. I drove up to campus on weekends to fly fish, explore the outdoors, and hang out with friends at Green Key, an annual Dartmouth event featuring live music and free food. I also presented a poster about my research on female health disparities in the United States under the mentorship of public health demographer and Dartmouth professor Alka Dev. The research, which I'll continue my senior year, was made possible by the funding I received as a Class of '74 Health Equity Scholar. It's a reminder of how far I've come since my first-year spring, which marked the beginning of my formal engineering education. In my Introduction to Engineering class, I teamed up with peers to build a portable hydroelectric generator.
I also worked as a teaching assistant in the Jewish Studies program during sophomore spring, a term after I'd returned from Berlin.
SUMMER
During my first-year summer, I designed weekly STEM camp curricula at the Museum of Flight in Seattle that helped to inspire and foster curiosity in the next generation of engineers. In Dartmouth tradition, I spent sophomore summer on campus. After finishing a problem set on queuing theory or reliability for my Discrete & Probabilistic Systems class, my friends and I would meander down to the Connecticut River to fish off of our kayaks. I lived in sandals all summer—and while that meant I was always ready to fish, I had to run back to my room more than a few times before returning to my shifts at the MShop. During my junior summer, I lived in Boston and traded my sandals for penny loafers as a summer analyst for a consulting firm that specializes in telecommunications, media, and technology strategy.
Illustration by Federica Bordoni
