Dear NKU campus community,
I am sad to share the news that Dr. Larry Giesmann, one of our founding faculty members, passed away on January 30, at the age of 81.
Dr. Giesmann joined our Biological Sciences Department in 1972, not long after earning his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Kentucky. For the next 37 years, he was devoted to the students at NKU and to our community, especially pre-med students. He founded our pre-medical review board and as an advisor helped hundreds of future medical doctors launch their careers. Dr. Giesmann also served as Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences.
And he did not limit his service to the classroom — he also served as the first men’s wrestling coach at NKU.
Dr. Giesmann was named Outstanding Professor in 1983, winning the award now known as the Frank Sinton Milburn Outstanding Professor Award. Later, he was named Kentucky’s Outstanding College Science Teacher by the Kentucky Academy of Science in 1991 and received the Kentucky Advocates Acorn Award for outstanding teaching in 1992. Dr. Giesmann was honored as Professor Emeritus of Botany after his retirement from NKU in 2009 and continued his support of our university’s students. He and his wife, Dr. Laura Trice, have been incredibly generous to our NKU family, establishing first the Larry Giesmann and Laura Trice Endowed Scholarship in 2015 to support student-athletes on the men’s cross-country team. Then in 2016, he started the Larry Giesmann Biology Scholarship to support biological sciences majors. And just last year, a substantial gift from Drs. Giesmann and Trice allowed us to establish the Dr. Larry A. Giesmann Endowed Professorship in Biology.
Dr. Giesmann was one of the very best our community has had to offer and his impact on this university will last forever.
Services will take place Saturday, February 8, at 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Alexandria. Our community is invited to remember Dr. Giesmann with a contribution to St. Elizabeth Hospice in his honor, or one of the Giesmann endowed scholarships, or to the endowed professorship in his name.
Please join me in sending our heartfelt sympathies to Dr. Trice and Dr. Giesmann’s family, friends and to the campus community.
