Off and running in first week of class

Students use motion trackers and sensors in “The Physics of Sports.”

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Campus & Community
Off and running in first week of class

Eileen O’Grady

Harvard Staff Writer

September 18, 2023 4 min read

‘So much enthusiasm’ and so many icebreakers — at least one in puzzle form

Part of the Photography series

Harvard’s campus and community through the lens of our photographers.

Fall semester began last week and thousands of students attended their first class.

“There’s always a sense of energy and excitement that comes with the first week of class,” said Nancy E. Hill, Charles Bigelow Professor of Education. “There’s so much enthusiasm about what the year ahead holds, hopes and dreams that students have about their new year. As a faculty member I think about it as well — what do I hope to accomplish in the year ahead?”

Hill is teaching “#Adulting: Social Science Perspectives on the Transition to Adulthood,” a first-year seminar about what it means to be an adult, how society defines adulthood, and how those markers may look different for different adolescents.

“It’s a fun class to teach because the students are in the middle of it,” Hill said. “It’s just a fun way to think about that first year in College and it gives them an opportunity to learn about theories and research, but also do self-reflection.”

Kelly Miller, a senior lecturer in Applied Physics, gets the semester started in “The Physics of Sports.” The students won’t be sitting for long.

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Benjamin Zeisberg ’23 jumps and generates a readout of his muscle movement and energy expenditure.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

In Miaki Ishii’s first-year seminar, “Earth Science Goes to the Movies,” students will watch natural-disaster movies, learn the science behind the disasters portrayed, and use math and physics concepts to calculate how realistic the portrayal is.

Ishii, a professor of earth and planetary sciences, started with a brain-teasing icebreaker to get the students collaborating. She wrote the students’ names on the board in a nonalphabetic but nonrandom order, and had students do a scientific investigation using the info that they wrote on their own seminar application forms to figure out how they were categorized.

“They have to communicate with one another, get data, and try to recreate the order,” Ishii said. “The first class is really geared toward how to get students comfortable with one another so that we can talk.”

Jakob Frates ’26 attends “Social Inequality” in William James Hall.

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Christina Cross, assistant professor of Sociology, lectures on sources of inequity in America.

Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Mykalyster Homberg ’24 (left) and Luis Fernando Esteva Sueiro ’24 get acquainted with some of the tools they will be learning about in “Celestial Navigation.” The 108-year-old course teaches students to find their way on sea, land, and air.

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F.W. Wright Senior Lecturer in Astronomy Philip Sadler takes the helm at the chalkboard.

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Ellie Powell ’25 demonstrates a navigation technique.

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Melinda Modisette ’25 (left) paints a “shoe portrait” as an introductory activity for the class “Thinking With Your Hand: Intermediate Painting.”

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Instructor Judith Belzer displays the students’ work during the activity.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Amy E. Clark, assistant professor of Anthropology, and Matthew Liebmann, Peabody Professor of American Archaeology and Ethnology, team up to teach “Archaeological Method and Theory” in the Peabody Museum.

Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

The class covers archaeological methods and theory, emphasizing the 1950s onward.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

A student takes notes as Christina Ciocca Eller, assistant professor of sociology and social studies, teaches “Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality” inside William James Hall.

Photos by Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Mattheus Carpenter ’24 (left) directs a question at Naomi Oreskes, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and affiliated professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

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Oreskes teaches “Burning Books, Fighting Facts” inside Harvard Hall.

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Paul J. Kosmin, Philip J. King Professor of Ancient History, shows slides in “Introduction to the Ancient Greek World.”

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Frances Campos ’26 and classmates take in Kosmin’s lecture.

Photos by Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer