PASADENA >> Julie Jester is a fitting name for the Caltech electrical engineering senior.

In her career, she’s lead a pack of jokers in small-scale pranks, foolies and jests throughout Caltech and Pasadena, like peppering the campus with small mole hills and plush moles holding Caltech signs on Mole Day, Oct. 23.

Pranking, after all, is part of the Caltech legacy, along with ground-breaking studies in science and technology. But on Monday, in true Caltech prankster fashion, 100 undergraduates in the loosely formed Caltech Prank Club stepped up their game to perform two major pranks touting Pasadena Pride at the Rose Bowl, where all eyes were on the Bowl Championship Series national title game.

The group of students spent three days creating a 2,000-square-foot sign that spelled out Pasadena and plastered it on a hillside overlooking the Rose Bowl during Monday’s BCS game. The letters are in the uneven fashion identical to the world-famous Hollywood sign. Each letter that spells out Pasadena is 20 feet by 12 feet. It could be seen from across the Arroyo and in Linda Vista.

“We’ve had smaller ones, but nothing quite on this scale for a while,” said Jester, who swears that is her birth name. “We wanted to pull a Hollywood prank and wanted to pull a Rose Bowl prank. We put it together to do something that harkens back to the previous pranks, and won’t get us arrested.”

The buck didn’t stop there. Just before halftime, 6,300 orange lights illuminated the Pasadena sign to transform it to the words “Caltech.” The lights were powered by eight car batteries, one for each letter. Most of the lettering was made on the Caltech campus and the foot of the hill during break using 2x4s and white paint.

Kip Thorne, Caltech professor and alumna lives in the area, owned by the Miraor Ranch Homeowners Association. Thorne helped facilitate the prank and made sure it was within the confines of the law, according to Caltech chemistry senior Samantha Piszkiewicz.

She was in charge of several aspects of the prank, including organizing the dozens of volunteers representing different majors, grade levels and houses at Caltech.

“We had to carry everything up the hill while it was daylight,” Piszkiewicz said. “That we were only able to do because we had so many volunteers.”

Caltech has a decades-long history of pulling pranks. In 1984, a group of students sabotaged the Rose Bowl scoreboard to read Caltech and MIT rather than the participating teams, Illinois and UCLA.

A sign spelling out Caltech next to Hollywood’s iconic sign was displayed during the city’s 100th birthday in 1987.

Monday’s efforts put Caltech pranksterism on par with those good old days. A full list of Caltech pranks is available online.

“We’ve been trying very hard to come up with big pranks like this,” Piszkiewicz said. “It’s become increasingly more difficult because of general safety concerns, security and, honestly, concerning terrorism around big events. It’s very difficult to come up with something really big and really good where people don’t get arrested or cause a massive security issue.”

For Caltech officials, the pranks are always embraced.

“Extraordinary, creative pranks are a long-standing tradition at Caltech, and gives these exceptionally brilliant students a chance to relax and exhibit these talents in a fun, creative way,” Caltech spokeswoman Deborah Williams-Hedges said. “Caltech pranks are a key part of the institute’s history and identity. Day-to-day excitement happens on campus, and new tales are written every year.”

From bringing students together, to having their work spread across social media, Caltech’s latest was a success.

“I think we could stretch to say this is the biggest prank,” Jester said. “It took the most people and a lot of work and a lot of construction.”