SENIOR PROFILE: Betsy McIver

"I'm not grown up yet. That's why I want to be a Walt Disney Imagineer, so I can be a kid forever," explained Betsy McIver, SEAS '07, of her future aspirations.

McIver, a combined plan student who began her career at Claremont McKenna College, said she hopes her education will help her to achieve her lifelong goal of designing rides for Walt Disney theme parks.

Upon arriving in New York, the mechanical engineering major dove immediately into activities that would help her achieve her goal, including designing the set for the Varsity Show.

"It was absolutely crazy and time consuming, but I loved it," she said of the show. "I would wake up, do homework, go to class, then Varsity Show."

While at Columbia, McIver was also part of the Solar Splash team, where she helped to build a solar-powered hover craft. Her senior design project-which she worked on with fellow SEAS seniors Nick Vance, Susannah Shaw, Daniel Bersohn, and Xiang Wang)-won best senior design. The Solar Concentrating and Tracking Apparatus, which it was called, is a "compact, easy-to-use program for concentrating sunlight.

"These are some of the best two years of my life," McIver said, reflecting on her time in Morningside Heights. "I found my place, I found my people. Getting through was a major accomplishment."

"It was a little bit scary coming to the city because I come from a small town," she added. "But I'm glad that I pushed myself."

McIver is still waiting to hear whether she has been admitted to Carnegie Mellon's Master of Entertainment Technology program. Until then, she said, she will work as a residential program assistant at a summer camp in Santa Cruz, Calif.