ENGS 21 Class

Title: ENGS 21 Class

General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre: Customary Folklore: Rite of Passage
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data:

  • David Domonoske is a sophomore at Dartmouth College. He is a member of the alpine ski team, and hails from Park City, Utah. He plans on majoring in engineering (which he knew he wanted to do even before arriving at Dartmouth), and staying for an additional year to pursue the bachelor of engineering degree. He is a member of the Chi Heorot Fraternity. As a sophomore he hasn’t taken many engineering classes yet, as he has been working on fulfilling the numerous prerequisites. I interviewed Dave in Thayer on 11/3/17. We spoke informally for a while, and then I videoed a portion of the discussion for documentation purposes.

Contextual Data:

  • Social/Cultural Context: ENGS 21 is a class taken primarily by students who are just starting the engineering major at Dartmouth.  The class is a design-based class, where students are placed into group of 4-6 students, and are tasked with identifying a problem on campus, and creating a product that solves the problem.  The group works together throughout the term, and learns a lot about the resource and mentors that are available through Thayer. The class culminates with a big presentation at the end of the term, where each group shares the results of their project.  Most people who have taken the class describe it as a very unique experience, which isn’t really offered anywhere outside of Thayer.

Item:

  • The item is a description of an engineering class at Dartmouth, that constitutes a form of customary folklore (more specifically a rite of passage), as it is a required shared experience that brings the engineering community closer together, and marks a transition for students into the engineering major. According to Arnold van Gennep, a rite of passage can be separated into three groups: pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal. For ENGS 21, the pre-liminal stage would be the period of time before one enrolls in the class, as you haven’t begun the true transition into the engineering community yet. The liminal, or transitional stage would be the period of time while you are taking the class, as you are slowly integrating into the community, and are thus in between being fully removed and full integrated into the community. Finally, the post-liminal stage is when you are finished with the class, as this marks the end of the transition into the Thayer community. The students now have this meaningful shared experience with the older Thayer students, and it brings everyone closer together.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

  • Dave: I’m David, I’m a ’20, and I’m in ENSG 21 right now. It’s a class where everybody is I groups at the beginning, and you go out into the world and identify a problem. And then your group brainstorms different solutions to this problem. And you pick your best one, and you go through the design process, trying to figure out what different ways you could fix this, and then you start building prototypes, and then by the end of the class, hopefully you have a solid product that is usable, and will help people in the real world.Alexander: Okay, so how do you think participating in this class has affected the way you see yourself as part of the Dartmouth engineering community?Dave: It’s definitely the first time I’ve been involved in Thayer. Before this I’ve just done pre reqs. This is the first time where I’m down in the machine shop, I’m down in Couch lab building stuff, I’m working with a lot of professors. It’s also like every time I’m down there people ask how its going. They’ve been in ENGS 21 before, they know what the process is like, and kind of learning what it’s like to build something in Thayer. It’s basically a rite of passage into Thayer.

Informant’s Comments:

  • Dave said that he thinks the best part of the class has been the support and mentorshipthat he has started to see from other Dartmouth engineering students, who seem to be more willing to go out of their way to give advice or check in now that he is taking ENGS 21.

Collector’s Comments:

  • In initially hearing Dave’s comments about ENGS 21, I thought that this must be a form of customary folklore, as it’s a shared experience specific to Dartmouth engineers, and it is the most notable class that engineers share. I am an engineer myself, and anytime I talk to another engineer that has graduated, they always ask me what I did for my ENGS 21 project, as it’s that unique of an experience. To confirm this, I went back to the Wilson reading titled, Documenting Folklore, and he says, “Customary practices range broadly across the full spectrum of human activity, but they tend to focus on ceremonies and festive events which tie people more closely to their family, ethnic, religious, occupational, and regional groups; on rites of passage which move people through transitional stages of life such as birth, puberty, marriage, incorporation into new social groups, and death.” I believe that ENGS 21 must fall into this category, as it’s a human activity that ties engineering more closely to the larger Dartmouth engineering community, and it also serves as a rite of passage into the Dartmouth engineering major, where you transition from the peripheries of the pre reqs to the core engineering classes, where fellow engineers start to accept you into the tight knit community in Thayer.  In hearing about Dave’s experience, it seems as though Thayer has done a great job designing this class, as Dave felt it introduced him to the resources at Thayer, and also the general community.

Collector’s Name: Alexander Sullivan

Tags/Keywords:

  • customary folklore, rite of passage, tradition

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *