So You Want To Be an Engineer?

The Vassar-Dartmouth Dual Degree Program

You can do a lot of things at Vassar, but you can’t build an engine or design, build, and market a frame for an indoor hammock. But if you’re a Vassar student who spends two years at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, you can do lots of things like that. Just ask Tim Yoo ’18, Lisa Je ’18, and other Vassar students enrolled in the Thayer Dual-Degree Program.

Vassar students in the Machine Shop at the Thayer School of Engineering. Bottom, from the left: Stephanie Jump, Wanjiru Gachuhi, Evangelia Stoikou, Carolyn Savich, Rachel Josef, and James Gibson. Top: Robert Nikolai, and Ross Guju. (Photo: Karen Endicott/Dartmouth)

Yoo, a chemistry major from Atlanta, GA, won a chocolate bar and an Amazon gift card from a Dartmouth professor last year for designing the most efficient engine in his thermodynamics class. Je, a chemistry major from New York City, was one of five Vassar students who teamed up to develop the idea for the hammock stand.

Over the past 30 years, dozens of Vassar students have completed the Thayer Dual-Degree program, combining their liberal arts education at Vassar with a fast-track engineering curriculum at Dartmouth. Students spend their first two years at Vassar, then take engineering courses at Dartmouth in their junior year. They complete their engineering degree requirements with a second year at Dartmouth after they graduate from Vassar.