Heeere's the Prof...

When he was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California (class of '71), Eric Cohen was so bored by some professors that he fell asleep in class. Now he is doing his best to keep the current student body from dozing off too. In fact, Cohen, a gagwriter for Johnny Carson and NBCTV, has been hired by U.S.C. to write jokes for professors to use in their lecture courses.

Cohen's campus job--unique in academe--was the idea of U.S.C. Dean Donald Lewis, a harsh critic of the bum-bung classroom performances of many college teachers. Lewis is particularly impatient with "typically inept" professors who read old and boring lecture notes to freshmen, most of whom are accustomed to watching fast-paced television programs. "The students catch on quickly," he says. "Soon they don't even show up."

To lure the students back into the lecture halls and make them more attentive, Lewis hired Cohen last year. He assigned him first to work on the lectures of a professor of psychology who had been rated "one of the worst" by his classes. Cohen, 26, "infused" jokes into the professor's lecture--on abnormal psychology--and had him begin by saying, "I consider myself particularly qualified to discuss troubled people because I've been both a student and a teacher here at U.S.C." The professor concluded his gag-filled talk by explaining how a student could measure his mental health: "Statistically, about one of every three persons is troubled. I'd like each of you to think of your two closest friends. If they both seem all right to you--then you're the one." He left the room to a standing ovation, but his reinvigorated style came too late; he was fired at the end of the semester.

A Little Snobbish. This fall Cohen is writing jokes for the casualty's replacement, Professor Scott Fraser, a more polished lecturer. One example, from a talk on "drive reduction" theories: "When they found a Japanese soldier recently who'd been living alone on a desert island for 29 years unaware World War II was over, he was going steady with a coconut tree he called Shirley."

Cohen's efforts have met some professorial resistance. "I may be a little snobbish," sniffs Professor John Cantel-on, "but I don't think you are necessarily going to turn a Caspar Milquetoast with a Ph.D. into a scintillating lecturer." Adds Religion Professor J. Wesley Robb: "What happens to learning when a class becomes enamored of an actor?"

Even Cohen admits that there is a limit to what he can accomplish. "You don't want your psych professor sounding like Henny Youngman," he says. "That would be too jarring."

For his services, Cohen receives only a "token payment" (his NBC salary runs to four figures a week). He explains: "U.S.C. really can't afford me." But as a former student he has other rewards: "There's a rather delicious, perverse thrill to going back there now in such a position of authority."

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