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Look who's making us laugh
ASEE Prism, Sep 2003
GOOD EVENING, ladies and germs. I just flew in from Detroit and, boy, are my arms tired. No, but seriously folks, stop me if you've heard this one before ... about the engineer who tossed away his slide rule for a successful career in comedy. Ha, ha... Well, obviously, the art of telling funny jokes is a talent bestowed on few of us. And luckily for fans of comedy, back in 1987, Jeff Caldwell realized that when it came to engineering, he was a pretty good comic. But it took him a few years and several degrees before he figured that out. The San Jose native got his undergraduate and master's in civil engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then headed to Carlsbad, Calif., where he worked for a very small engineering firm "ostensibly sizing sewage pumps and designing water systems for subdivisions but mostly staring out of the window." So Caldwell returned to Hopkins and entered a Ph.D. program in environmental engineering. During his pre-thesis coursework, he began performing standup comedy at open-mike nights, and before long was getting paid for it. That's when he realized that he had more of an aptitude for making people laugh than designing drainage systems. Since then, Caldwell, 40, has not only worked the clubs but appeared frequently on TV, including A&E's "Evening at the Improv/'MSNBC's "lnternight," and ESPN's "Lighter Side of Sports." He's lately been working with a couple of networks to develop a sitcom pilot.
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Most of his comedy is observational: "I've always been pretty detail oriented." But a small part of his live act refers to his being "a crummy engineer," and he also pokes fun at various technological advances. Says he wryly of that techie material: "Smart crowds love it, others are less enthused."
Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Sep 2003
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Most Popular Articles in Reference
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