Due to Georgia Tech’s priority and focus on science topics, it is easy to assume that the arts are limited to only arts-based organizations, like the various dance organizations on campus. Although Tech is home to the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, it is still rare to meet people on campus who are members of the college. The Georgia Tech Arts Department wants to change that convention.
On Sept. 25, Tech hosted two comedy shows for Josh Johnson at the Ferst Center. Johnson is the newest correspondent on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and has achieved a meteoric rise to popularity by releasing weekly, hour-long specials on YouTube for free. While most comedians perform the same set while on tour, Johnson creates a new set every time he is in a new city and uploads it on YouTube for people to see — a truly remarkable feat, considering the vast amount of material he needs to create constantly. . For the Josh Johnson event, the Tech Arts Department gave two Tech students the opportunity to perform as openers before Josh Johnson took the stage: Sankalp Chandesh, third-year EE, and Lucy Scott, fourth-year CM.
Two weeks before the show, the department hosted an open-mic audition where anyone could come and perform a five-minute set. From the audition, the top two performers, Chandesh and Scott, were selected to perform their five-minute set for the Johnson special.
“We are trying to get the message out that our students can not just sit and be a participant, but actually have an opportunity to do something on the stage,” said Daniel Parker, Arts Department Director.
By allowing Tech students to showcase their artistic and comedic sides, the Arts Department aimed to encourage students to feel more comfortable expressing these aspects not only on stage but also in front of their peers. While students here are interested in science and engineering, the majority of students are also creative, and Tech wants students to be able to show that side more often.
“We’re trying to make the arts attractive to the students, so when they leave, they go, man, I got to come back,” Parker said.
The two student comics echoed Parker’s sentiments by describing how small yet close the campus’s comedy scene is. Chandesh and Scott both expressed that they often see the same people come to open-mics.
“I’d say it’s pretty small, and I know just a couple of people that also do stand-up comedy around here,” Chandesh mentioned.
Despite the community’s size, they both emphasized how cooperative and kind everyone is. Oftentimes, students create comics while bouncing jokes off others and ask them to help them improve their sets.
“They’d be more than willing to help with anything or just write with you, test out different things,” Chandesh said.
While there may be students interested in stand-up comedy, it can be challenging to know where to look. According to Scott’s account, she got lucky in her freshman year because one of her friends sent her an Instagram post about a student stand-up comedy event.
“And so I think there’s a ton of beginners or people who are interested who are just nervous or don’t think that they belong in those spaces or don’t even know where to look in the first place,” Scott said.
Chandesh recognized that it was an amazing opportunity to have Johnson on campus, and backstage, Johnson gave Chandesh and Scott a special moment, offering advice on how to improve and craft their storytelling.
“He was going on about the morality of stand-up and how to find a good ethical compass when writing jokes, and that they should have a sense of integrity and intelligence,” Chandesh said.
Allowing students to showcase their skills and giving them the same chance to perform in front of seasoned stand-up comics, GT Arts provides students with an opportunity to shine in fields outside of the sciences for which they are known. Tech is expanding this opportunity by offering a Bachelor of Science in Arts, Entertainment, and Creative Technologies for Fall 2026.
“We’re working hard to create and collaborate on our own new works here, and so this is just the beginning of all that,” Parker said on the new major program.
Scott joked that just because she got to open for Josh Johnson does not mean she is guaranteed to open for the next comic to come to Tech, and she would love it if someone else could challenge themselves in a new space, especially those who may be underrepresented in the comedy field.
“I would love it if we had more comics that looked like me because oftentimes people write off stand-up comedy as a male-dominated field,” Scott said.
GT Arts hopes to continue hosting unique events for students to engage in areas outside of the STEM curriculum. Information about future events will be posted on their Instagram @georgiatecharts.