 |
|
September
27, 2004 Vol. 75, no. 5F
 |
| ANIMAL LOVER: CEE alum Richard Nye
(B.S.’66) left grad school at Berkeley to become a professional
baseball player. When that career ended, he chose veterinary medicine
because it “also offered problems to solve.” |
CEE alum
chooses not just one, but two unusual careers for an engineer
CEE alum Richard Nye (B.S.'66)
took the long route to becoming a veterinarian. First there was the
engineering degree from UC Berkeley, then there was the professional
baseball career.
Nye came to Berkeley on an academic scholarship, which became an athletic
and academic scholarship after his freshman year. He enjoyed his engineering
classes, especially the highway construction class, and he was driven
to get good grades. He was a typical student, except for one thing.
As a junior he was drafted by the Astros baseball team, in the first
baseball draft ever held.
The bonus offered was modest and not enough of a motivation to sign
a professional contract at that time. He chose to stay in school and
play his last year at Cal. In 1966, after his senior year, he was drafted
by the Chicago Cubs. After two months in the minor leagues, he moved
up to the big leagues and finished that year pitching in the majors.
After the season ended, Nye did the sensible thing, he returned to school
to finish his degree and made plans for graduate school in soil mechanics.
“I thought that baseball was a fluke and I wanted something to
fall back on. Besides I didn’t think I was drafted high enough
to take the whole thing seriously,” Nye remembers.
After completing his bachelor’s degree, Nye went on to graduate
school in civil engineering at Berkeley. But soon he had an epiphany,
realizing that engineering was not his passion. Luckily, he had something
unusual to fall back on.
“Engineering didn’t inspire me, so I went off to spring training
and played professional baseball for four years. I even got an opportunity
to throw fast balls to Willie Mays and the rest of the Giants,”
he says.
He played with the Cardinals and the Expos before his five-summer career
came to an end. When Nye blew out his rotator cuff, his professional
pitching career was finished.
Unfortunately, there was no baseball nest-egg to cushion the blow. Unlike
the highly paid athletes of today, baseball players of the ’60s
made an average of $7,000 a year. Nye had to work in the off season
to make ends meet.
Instead of pursuing a job in engineering, Nye decided to go to veterinary
school, despite being 28 with a family to raise.
“My time in engineering taught me that I really enjoyed problem
solving. I realized that medicine was another area of problem solving
that interested me,” he says.
His engineering degree was a big help in veterinary school, says Nye,
because it sharpened his critical thinking and problem solving skills.
Other skills that weren’t taught in engineering classes fortunately
came naturally to Nye.
“The area in which I got a lot of return pleasure from my work
was communicating with the pet’s owners and connecting with the
animals,” he says.
Currently Nye runs his own bird and exotic animal hospital in a Chicago
suburb. It was the first hospital of its kind in the U.S. He loves his
job and though he uses little engineering daily, he doesn’t regret
his time at Berkeley. He says the career choices he made have steered
his life in the right direction.
“If I had gotten involved in medicine right off the bat (no pun
intended), I would have ended up in human medicine and I wouldn’t
have been happy. I prefer working with animals,” he says.
|
|
