I’m an Engineer and a Skier

Transcript

I'm currently enrolled in the AB/BE program and studying mechanical engineering. My name is Louis Latulippe. I'm a 25 and I'm an engineer and a skier. 

I started doing engineering when I was very young. I always loved taking things apart and building things. And then, I guess, in high school, I loved the math and physics classes that I took. And when I got to Dartmouth, I realized that engineering school would be a home for me in the sense that the engineering and the math was fun. But really using this background to create or to design new solutions to engineering problems, and to apply this knowledge was the most fun part. 

And this past fall, I was enrolled in ENGS 76: Machine Engineering. In that class, we were tasked with creating a rover that could pick up objects and then traverse a course and a few different obstacles. That project was particularly interesting because it combined design elements, prototyping elements, and then building elements. We got to play around the machine shop and to build a complex assembly. So skiing came before engineering at Dartmouth in the sense that I learned of Dartmouth through ski racing.

Latulippe finished second overall at the 2025 UNH Carnival. (Photo by Gil Talbot)

So I started skiing when I was very young, and at first it was really just a hobby. And then, when I got to high school, I started really skiing more competitively and pushing to really become faster. And since then, I've really just been trying to combine school and skiing to reach the highest levels in both. 

I would say that engineering relates to skiing in many different ways. For one, sometimes ski racing, when you're going through a difficult time on the slopes, it's a little bit like working hard towards some engineering problem you can't solve, and really taking a step back and trying to look at the problem in a different way. It's something that's useful both in engineering but also on the slopes. 

I think that the biggest reward really is the journey. Being able to pursue two of my passions—engineering and ski racing—at this level at the same time, without having to sacrifice one or the other, is really just the biggest reward. 

It is very difficult to manage your time efficiently between ski racing and engineering, just because there's such high time commitments. That being said, the tremendous resources and support that Thayer offers me and dozens of other students to pursue other passions outside of engineering while maintaining the highest levels of engineering learning is something that is unique to Thayer, and something that I'm very thankful for.