In Profile: Alex Slocum
It’s Wednesday evening, so Alexander Slocum is hard at work cooking up a huge batch of spaghetti, green beans and garlic bread in a cramped kitchen on the top floor of MIT’s Building 24. That might not be most people’s image of how an MIT professor spends part of his workday, but it’s something Slocum does every Wednesday for a hungry and appreciative group of a few dozen freshmen.“Food is a great conversation catalyst,” Slocum explains with a smile as he lays out the dinner on a set of long tables and the students eagerly line up.The students are all part of the Experimental Study Group, a program celebrating its 40th year at MIT. As an alternative that allows about 50 freshmen to satisfy their General Institute Requirements in an atmosphere of small, personalized classes and peer learning in small study groups, ESG generally provides a sense of community and...