Alumni Profiles

B.S., Sports Medicine, minor in Biology, 1999

Master of Public Health and Master of Health Administration candidate

University of Maryland

College Park, Md.

To watch a video with Larry, click here.

“I’ll tell you what my problem with Guilford College is,” says Larry Jessup. “My problem is that I was there only four years, and I wish I could have been there two to three years longer. I loved it there. LOVED it.”

He goes on: “If we lived in a perfect world, I’d stay at Guilford College forever, always learning, always growing.”

He considered going to Michigan State University, where he also was accepted. “Once I visited Michigan State University, I knew that it was not the place for me. Guilford’s visit, though, that clinched the deal. It felt right. The energy was right, and everyone was friendly, especially the faculty. They were all genuine, sincere, eager to help … as were the students I met. I knew right away — Guilford was it.”

As it turned out, Guilford College provided the depth and scope of education that Larry was seeking. “Having prominent medical doctors serving as our team physiciansAND as professors was a dynamic resource for us. It definitely separated usfrom our peers at other colleges and universities.”

Larry adds that Guilford was worth every dollar and every hour of hard work: “The workload was rigorous, and that was great preparation for the professional jobs I went on to, as well as for graduate school. It really comes down to the availability of the professors at Guilford. They were, in a word, unbelievable.”

His friends from larger schools found it unbelievable, too. “I had friends who did choose to go to larger colleges,” he says, “and they were numbers at their schools. Numbers, not people. When they found out that we Guilford students were all on a first-name basis with our professors, they were shocked. It was funny.”

Not surprisingly, he has made lifelong friends with his professors. “The small classes meant that professors were able to take the extra time to answer questions, as much time as needed … and they did. It makes a huge difference, and I’m still grateful. Here it is, years later, and I’m still in touch with many of my professors — particularly my advisor — as well as with others who were students when I was.”

After graduating from Guilford College, Larry spent almost two years as a trauma technician in the emergency room of George Washington University Medical Center in D.C. “My job there involved assessing and providing first treatment to people who came in with life-threatening injuries and illnesses,” he says, “It was a very rugged urban environment, and what I experienced in that emergency-room setting taught me a very important lesson: Life is short. You really do need to make the most of each day, because you never know if it’s your last.”

Larry says that his experiences in sports medicine at Guilford had been defining ones, as well. “I enjoyed interning with the team doctors — I was in on surgeries, and I was working in a hospital emergency room there, too. I learned from those experiences that I was not only academically capable but also happy working in health care. It was where I wanted to be.”

Graduate school will take him to the next level. “It’s interesting about grad school,” he says. “One of the reasons I was drawn to Guilford was that so many of its graduates have gone on to major graduate programs. In fact, Guilford gave me great discipline, which will help me in grad school, and my advisor wrote me a recommendation that was amazing. It not only helped me get admitted to this program at Maryland, but it also helped me land a graduate assistantship.”

Larry Jessup is a remarkably engaging person, and he credits Guilford College with helping him acquire that kind of personality: “In my current job [he is the key account executive for the Northeast Division of The Laboratory Corporation of America, working out of Washington, D.C.], I deal with a tremendously diverse group of people, and in many ways it is similar to the student population at Guilford. I know that I’m successful professionally in large part due to the people skills, the communication skills, that I developed while at Guilford.”

His future is worth watching. He will earn the master of public health degree to serve internationally, especially in the areas of malaria and AIDS in Africa, and he will earn the master of health administration degree for healthcare consulting on the domestic level.

Talking to high school students thinking about enrolling at Guilford College, he promises this: “You definitely will be prepared academically for graduate school or for the professional world of work, and you also definitely will grow as an individual. Guilford College will shape you.”