Tess McEnery

B.A., Political Science, summa cum laude, 2006
Master’s of Public Administration candidate
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
Syracuse University

You might want to sit down for this. Tess McEnery has served a semester’s internship from Guilford College working in the U.K. Parliament (that’s right — in London). She has worked as a field coordinator here in Greensboro for a presidential campaign. And she has graduated with high honors from Guilford College with a degree in political science.

Tess recently completed a semester as a graduate student at the prestigious Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, steaming toward a master’s degree in public administration next June. At the same time, she will earn a certificate in advanced security studies at the Institute for Security and Counterterrorism from Maxwell.

The kicker: She is 19 years old.

At age 15, she entered the Early College at Guilford, the only school of its kind in North Carolina. As she was close to graduating from Guilford College, Tess applied to six of the nation’s top 10 graduate schools in public administration. She was eagerly accepted by all six.

Guilford College, she says, convinced her that she wants to work in some area of public service. She was steered in that direction — and to Syracuse itself — by two professors she had early on at Guilford: Ken Gilmore, chair of the political science department, and Dr. Kent Chabotar. Kent also happens to be the president of Guilford College.

“That’s the great thing about Guilford,” Tess says, “the fact that your professors really are professors, not teaching assistants.” She says that when she arrived at Syracuse, she was wary of being with graduates of Harvard, Princeton and other world-famous schools. But she quickly found that her Guilford classroom experiences and relationships often surpassed those of her Ivy League counterparts. The other students had not received the support from faculty that Tess had. She was not only on a first-name basis with all of her undergraduate professors, but also they repeatedly told her, “If you need help, I am here for you.” And they added, “For the rest of your life.”

The Quaker tradition and style changed Tess from a somewhat hard-edged liberal into a more patient and understanding activist. Living in London and serving the internship in the House of Commons augmented her already formidable global awareness. “All in all,” she says, “Guilford College taught me to temper my ideological fervor with empathy, understanding, tolerance and a large-picture perspective.”

She adds: “Before I went to Guilford College, I thought I was socially and politically aware. The eye-opener for me was that Guilford encourages ALL points of view, not just the liberal ones! They want students to investigate deeply all aspects of their viewpoints. They want you to study, to approach ideas in a learned and sophisticated manner. And with study, every opinion is worthy of consideration and analysis.”

She quotes a favorite professor who says that at Guilford, all opinions are invited … except stupid ones. He defines stupid as uninformed. He once stopped students from going to protest the war in Iraq, saying “If you can’t show me Iraq on a map, you have no business protesting.”

Tess is confident that the time she spent on the Guilford College campus is the defining part of her life, shaping her into what she is today. And what is she? She’s an extremely bright 19-year-old with a great sense of humor and an obviously rosy future.

Tess has advice for those in high school and searching for the right college: “Don’t pay attention to the cafeteria, the parking, the reputation of a school. Instead, find one that will make you better at what you love doing. That’s paramount — identify what you love doing most, and then find a college that will help you grow in that area.”

Tess also believes that students need to take a first-hand look at the student-faculty relationships. She says: “To learn what Guilford College classes are really like, visit! The institution’s environment — its lawns, its location, etc. — those things do matter, but the relationships that students build with the faculty members are the most important thing.”

Those relationships are what gave Tess the confidence to achieve so much so quickly. They are, she says, what gave her a supportive “personal education.”

What does the future hold for Tess? She might go into government service, she might work at the United Nations, she might attend law school to study international law.

Tess sometimes describes her mission in life by words she quotes from the late U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey: “The moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

She says that Guilford College has prepared her to pass that moral test and has convinced her that she only will be happy if she can serve the public.