Q&A with Mike Schiff '86 - Bright Futures for Humanities Majors

Join us as we welcome back alumnus Mike Schiff '86 as part of our Bright Futures for Humanities Majors Samuels Family Speaker Series. Associate Professor of Instruction, Scriptwriting and Film and Media Production Pirooz Kalayeh will interview Schiff about his long career in television and offer advice to students. A reception will follow.

After graduating from the University of Rochester, Mike attended graduate film school at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he met his longtime writing partner, Bill Martin. The two launched their television career in 1992 as writers on Fox’s popular sketch series In Living Color, followed by additional sketch series before moving into half‑hour comedy with NBC’s Emmy‑winning 3rd Rock from the Sun, starring John Lithgow. They spent five seasons and 110 episodes on 3rd Rock, serving as showrunners beginning in season three, then went on to create the Fox/WB comedy Grounded for Life, which ran for five seasons. Since then, Mike and Bill have run or written on series ranging from Cavemen to Trial & Error to The Soul Man, and later created CBS’s The Unicorn, starring Walton Goggins. For the last four years, they ran CBS’s The Neighborhood, starring Cedric the Entertainer and Max Greenfield.