ESG sponsors a number of three or six unit pass/fail seminars each year on a variety of innovative subjects not covered in the regular curriculum, including topics such as psychology, cooking, social networking, ethics, and language. These seminars are open to all MIT students and are intended to be hands-on and experiential in nature.
Spring 2025 Seminars at ESG
All seminars are six units P/F credit unless noted otherwise.
ES.010 Chemistry of Sports: Understanding How Exercise Affects Your Body [6 units]
Instructor: Patti Christie, Steve Lyons
Time and location: Tuesdays, 3-5pm, 24-619
The purpose of this seminar is to study the chemistry and biology of sport and the effect of exercise and nutrition on athletic performance and physical fitness. We will be able to use our own bodies to measure how exercise affects the body, through observations recorded in a training journal. We will look at nutrition and supplements (both legal and prohibited) to understand their impact on athletic performance; the effect of diet and exercise on anatomic and metabolic systems; the various biochemical reactions triggered by exercise; the role of endorphins, changes in blood chemistry and ways of stimulating long-term changes in your metabolism and even changes to our genetic programming. We will examine our own unique body chemistry and study how genetics, age and body type play a role in these physical and molecular changes that science is only beginning to understand. Finally, we will also examine the chemistry of sports equipment including swimming, cycling, and running equipment and its effect on athletic performance.
Patti Christie is Department Head of Chemistry and Biology at ESG. She has been teaching at ESG since 1995 (full-time since 1999) and is the designer of the Kitchen Chemistry seminar. Patti is the course coordinator for both 5.111 and 5.112 and is very familiar with the Chemistry GIRs. She also helps run the MIT Masters swimming program at the Z center pool. Patti graduated from the MIT chemistry department with a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry in 1996. She worked in a cardiovascular laboratory in the Biology Department from 1996 to 2005, where she helped develop and study a mouse with a predisposition for heart attacks.
Steve Lyons has been involved in the sport of triathlon for 18 years. He is a former member of the US National Team and a veteran of 13Ironman races including the world championships in Kona, Hawaii. After helping out with the seminar last spring, he placed second in his age division in the Olympic Distance Los Angles triathlon, September, 2007. He is a successful lawyer in civil and criminal litigation and a partner in the Boston firm of KSL & G Assigned Readings.
ES.100 Maker Seminar [3 units]
Instructor: Dave Custer
Time and location: Fridays, 4:00-5:00pm, 24-611A
ES.100 is an introduction to making, critical making, and use of MIT’s maker spaces. It builds skills needed for designing, conducting, and completing hands-on projects, such as may be encountered in undergraduate classwork and research activities. The course includes maker-space training (e.g. wood shop, laser cutter, 3D printing, and electronics fabrication) and open-ended maker projects, with work evenly divided between class, homework, and maker space activities.
Dave Custer has been teaching hands-on, interdisciplinary subjects at ESG since he was a student in the program, over 40 years ago. After graduation, he spent a few years as an electrical engineer before returning to teach at MIT. He is also a long-standing lecturer in WRAP, the Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication unit of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Writing program, where he teaches communication, primarily in mechanical and electrical engineering CI-Ms. In 2002 he was a recipient of an MIT Excellence award. In 2013 he received the James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. He is a member and former president of the UIAA Safety Commission, the global standards organization for climbing and mountaineering equipment. Dave spends his free time in the vertical world.
ES.S30 From Transistors to TikTok [3 units]
Instructor: Christian Cardozo
Time and location: Mondays, 7:00-9:00pm, 24-621
Computation and communication: they shape our world as we know it today. But these technologies didn’t emerge from thin air—they were born from common human experience, logic, and physics. From basic Python to artificial intelligence, from building a computer to connecting millions of them across the globe: we’ll introduce these topics in an accessible way for everyone, regardless of background. By term’s end, we’ll have explored many of the interesting classes of MIT, but without the pressure of actually being in them—learning for learning’s sake. No prereqs, no psets, no pressure!
Christian Cardozo has been with ESG and MIT, in some capacity or another, since 2013: as an undergrad, then graduate student, then as a lecturer. He taught 18.02 for a couple of years, produced interactive demos for 8.01 and 8.02, and—it’s probably safe to say— generally lived at ESG while there. Christian’s main passion is making things make sense. During his time as a lecturer in 2018 and 2019, he started a number of first-year seminars to introduce the material from advanced MIT courses early and without the pressure of being in them. He also served as a first-year advisor to help students make sense of the MIT firehose. After a year on staff, Christian moved to try a software job at a startup. The result, it turns out, is that every time he learns something interesting, he still just wishes he could teach it! With the pandemic, Christian has been able to teach around the world using a weatherman greenscreen setup. Now, returning to in-person teaching, Christian hopes to share foundational topics, conversations, and demos with students in a free-flowing, easy-going weekly seminar. Christian collects some of his insanity on his website, christiancardozo.com—as with this course, you are always welcome to visit.
ES.S40 The Origins of Western Ethical Thought [6 units]
Instructor: Lee Perlman
Time and location: TBD
We will spend the entire semester in close reading of two foundational texts in Western political and ethical thought, Plato The Republic and Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics.
ES.S70 Hack Yourself: Data-driven Wellbeing and Learning [6 units]
Instructor: A. Bell, C. Jernigan, P. Rebusco
Time and location: Fridays, 2:00-4pm, 24-621
Do you want to take charge of your wellbeing and learn at your best? In this seminar, you will discover how with practices based on positive psychology supported by data. At the end of the semester, you will have a toolkit of over 60 new habits plus some experience with data science tools you can use to “hack” yourself. Pre-req 6.100A or equivalent knowledge. Limited to 12, priority to ESG students.
ES.92 Authenticity [6 units]
Instructor: Lee Perlman
Time and location: Tuesdays, 12:00-2pm, taught at South Bay House of Corrections
Explores the question of how to live an authentic life, through works of western and eastern philosophy and contemporary psychology. Topics include emotions, anger, honesty, forgiveness, non-violent communication, conflict resolution, kindness and cruelty and compassion.
Lee Perlman is the Director of The Educational Justice Institute at MIT and a long time instructor of humanities subjects at ESG. Before earning his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Perlman spent eight years working in the political arena as a public interest lobbyist and political organizer. In 1978 Baltimore Magazine named him ‘the most feared lobbyist in Maryland’. He has taught at Harvard University, Brown University, Swarthmore College, Phillips Academy (Andover), and for more than 20 years has designed and taught a number of courses at MIT which offer students an integrated view of the humanities and sciences in the western tradition. In recent years he has taught these subjects in the Massachusetts jail and prison systems to a mixed cohort of MIT and incarcerated students. He has twice been awarded the Irwin Sizer Award for Most Significant Improvement to MIT Education (1997, 2015), and was the recipient of MIT’s MLK Leadership Award 2018. Lee is also a composer and musician, and the Music Director of the Deborah Abel Dance Company, which has toured in the US and India.
