Alumni Spotlight – Jessica (Dortch) Ericson ‘01

Jessica Dortch’s recent return to York County is a mixture of the new and the familiar. What’s new is an exciting posting at the Penn State Children’s Hospital Pediatric Infectious Disease Department in Hershey and (more exciting) her three month old baby.  What’s familiar is the comfortable feel of the small-town environment where she completed the first 17 years of her education and the closeness of her Southern York County rooted family. (She has three brothers who also graduated from SHS.)

Jessica was an excellent student at Susquehannock, consistently being named to the distinguished honor roll and earning induction into the National Honor Society. She also participated in the Science Olympiad and was a member of the quiz bowl team. Outside the classroom, she kept busy with a part-time job at Giant in Shrewsbury, where her family made a home, and was a member of the swim team.

“It was the school’s first interscholastic team,” she says,” and it was great to a part of it. But to be honest, I was terrible.”

She remembers chemistry teacher Ron Leese as having a strong and understandable influence on her professional career, but also credits the entire English Department – Mrs. Kling, Mrs. Thoman, and Mrs. Schultz – for instilling useful skills.

She knew from an early age that she wanted a career in medicine, but easily explains the English Department’s contribution in this way: “Much of my job is research oriented. It involves as much writing as it does science, and I believe I was very well prepared for that at Susquehannock. I draw on my writing skills on a daily basis.” She’s written several scientific papers on antibiotic safety in infants and book chapters for three pediatric textbooks.

Her best memories of her high school days involve attending classes with the same circle of friends and learning from so many great teachers who made learning fun. “Mrs. Thoman’s class was the only time I ate 20 different yam dishes in one sitting,” she said of the activities that centered around one novel.

After graduating with honors from SHS, she attended York College, where she earned a B.S. in Biology in 2005, again with an outstanding academic record. It was here that she met Tristan Ericson, to whom she is now married.

After York College, Jessica attended Ohio State where she fulfilled her primary career goal of earning an M.D. She completed her residency in Pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus in 2012.

Along the way, she decided to pursue a research-oriented career, advanced by accepting a fellowship at the Duke University Medical Center, which she completed in 2015.

From there, she moved on to her current assignment at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center. She sees children with complicated or unusual infections, and researches the best ways to use antibiotics to treat infections in infants and premature babies.

Outside work and caring for her newborn, she enjoys traveling, hiking and kayaking.

Thanks to Jessica Dortch, Class of 2001, for making us Warrior Proud.