On Carlin's HOF plaque: A two-time NCAA All-American and three-time qualifier, she won the 2008 East Regional in the outdoor 800. She also was a four-time Heptagonal Games champion—two indoor and two outdoor—and a five-time ECAC champion. Graduated with three indoor records, two outdoor marks, and as a member of seven record relay teams. Three of her individual records lasted at least 10 years, and six of the seven relay standards lasted at least 10 years. A two-year captain, she was the 2007-08 recipient of Penn's Association of Alumnae Fathers' Trophy and a third-team CoSIDA Academic All-America as a senior.
 
By Joe Juliano

Running came naturally for Jesse Carlin. Growing up in the Staten Island borough of New York, she discovered she could beat anyone in her neighborhood in a foot race and took pride in being the fastest kid on the block.
 
After setting numerous records at St. Joseph's by the Sea High School in events ranging from the 55-meter dash to the 1,000-meter run, Carlin found herself in demand as the first athlete at her school to be recruited by colleges. Thanks to her experiences for St. Joseph's at the Penn Relays, she selected the host university for her higher education.
 
However, she quickly realized that college was a huge step up from high school. No longer was pure talent the only factor in the quest to become an elite runner at Penn or in the Ivy League. The routine now included weightlifting and practice, the latter sometimes three times a day. The intensity was ramped up. She remembered as a freshman being "super sore and having trouble walking up stairs."
 
Nevertheless, she made remarkable progress settling into her two primary events, first the 400-meter run and then the 800. The rewards for her hard work—winner of the NCAA East Regional in the 800, a four-time Ivy Heptagonal and five-time ECAC champion, a member of seven record-setting relay teams and the holder of five individual school records by the time she graduated in 2008—earned her local and national acclaim.
 
Now, her successful career for the Quakers has earned Carlin entry into Class XII of the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame.
 
"As time passes and my records have just recently been broken, you don't know if you'll reach that (Hall of Fame) standard," said Carlin, now 35, a Lead Clinical Scientist at Vanda Pharmaceuticals living in Arlington, Va. "Of course I wanted it to happen and hoped that maybe they'd get to me eventually. So getting that call was awesome. I'm glad they remembered."
 
Carlin's marks may have been broken in recent years, but they had incredible staying power. Of her four individual records in the 400 (53.62 seconds outdoors, 55.39 seconds indoors) and the 800 (2:05.47 outdoors, 2:06.27 indoors), two lasted 12 years and two endured for 11 years. Her indoor 500-meter record (1:11.77) still stands.
 
She also is part of an indoor distance medley relay record (11:11.90) that remains in the book. She ran a leg on four relays—indoor and outdoor 4x800, outdoor 4x400 and distance medley—that were records that endured for anywhere from nine to 12 years before falling.
 
"You don't want to admit that you've been out (of college) that long," Carlin said, "but when my records were broken, I was like, 'Wow, that record was 12 years old. That record was 11 years old.' That's a pretty long time to hold it so it took some time to put it all in context. It's such a great program and the Ivy League always has great athletes.
 
"In the moment, it's the goal and the only acceptable outcome that you want, and when you get those championships and those records it's almost a relief because you were trying to get them."
 
"Jesse's career was amazing," said Gwen Harris, Penn's women's track & field coach from 2002 to 2012. "If you really look at it, she kind of propelled the program to the next level. If you ever looked at the records, you had to run national-caliber times in order to be No. 1 in a lot of the events and Jesse was in most of them. You sit back and look at it and you wonder how does that make a person great, because she was. She had a work ethic that was second to none."
 
The first in her family to attend college, Carlin entered Penn as a 200-meter runner but quickly shifted to the 400 during her freshman season of 2004-05. She improved her personal best to 53.62 seconds in 2006 and ran a 52-plus leg in the 4x400 relay. That same season, she moved up to the 800, a distance she was initially reluctant to try but one she was ready to take on.
 
"I started at 2:14s, 2:12s, and then there's a big jump and now I'm a 2:07 runner," she said. "Now you're in a different category. These are championship-level categories and I'm changing that mentality of not being scared, pushing it, going really fast that first lap when maybe other people had that old mentality. Then by the end, I was a 2:05, 2:04 runner."

Carlin had success balancing her training with her pre-med studies, admitting that "there were bits of fun in-between." She thought she could handle everything but there were times early when she felt out of place.
 
"I knew I was tough," she said. "I wanted to take advantage of everything. I had the opportunity of a lifetime to be at Penn.
 
"I had impostor syndrome, in that I didn't think I belonged there and the only reason I was there was because I was fast. I definitely had a chip on my shoulder, but I proved myself. It's like a weird thing they do. They let in these athletic freaks to go to classes with geniuses, so you have to take advantage. I tried the best I could."
 
She did just fine. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biological Basis of Behavior, with a minor in Chemistry, in 2008 and a Ph.D. from Penn Medicine in Pharmacology in 2014. She did a post-doctoral position at the National Institutes of Health from 2014 to 2017.
 
Tony Tenisci, who coached track & field at Penn for 30 years including four years as head coach, said Carlin was exceptionally upbeat and positive despite her busy schedule.
 
"I would talk to her a little bit about her academics and she was very casual about it," he said. "She just said, 'Well, this is my dream.' She was just a non-stressful type of kid. I think she had a lot of confidence in herself. Some people complain because they want the attention but not her. She was very grounded. I admired her very much because I realized that not only was she achieving high standards on the track, but that carried on to her academic side as well."
 
She still had time for some fun. During her time on campus, Carlin took part in an amateur bodybuilding competition conducted by the Penn track team. Because she was "really competitive" in the weight room and powerlifted, she entered several times as an undergraduate and graduate student and won six titles.
 
"I think I have more bodybuilding championships than I do Ivy League championships," she recently quipped.
 
Carlin worked before and after graduation to qualify for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials, but she was edged out in the 800 when she finished one-tenth of a second short of the top 30. She deferred graduate school for a year to keep training, then managed a professional career while balancing it with her studies. She tried again for the 2012 and 2016 Trials but even though her times got better, college runners were getting faster, and she did not qualify.
 
While doing post-doctoral work, she trained under Olympian Matthew Centrowitz and with World Championships qualifier Kerry Gallagher. She now competes for the Georgetown Running Club in Washington, where she was a part of the distance medley relay team that ran in the 2022 Millrose Games.
 
"You remember your past times and you think, 'I'm so washed up now,' so it was actually hard to continue," she said. "But I think about it as a privilege now to keep running, a way to stay part of the community, stay in shape, stay young, do what you love."
 
However, many at Penn do remember her past, and are delighted to see her in the Hall of Fame.
 
"When she came on board, she put us on the map in an area that was usually reserved for Villanova, Georgetown, and all of those classic middle-distance teams that would always dominate, but there she was," Tenisci said. "She was as good as any of them, and she represented Penn. She deserves this Hall of Fame recognition."