Larry Geraty

Lawrence "Larry" T. Geraty (born 1940) is an American academic who served as the second President of La Sierra University in Riverside, California.

[6] From 1966 to 1972 he undertook his PhD in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology with minor fields in Aramaic, Syriac, classical Hebrew, Northwest Semitic philology, and Old Testament history at Harvard University.

During the summer of 1970, while a graduate student at Harvard, Geraty studied at Hebrew University in Jordan on a Fulbright Scholarship.

[9] In 1986 he was instrumental in forming the Archeological Consortium of Adventist Colleges when he led a tour of students from the member schools to the Madaba Plains Project dig, including the 'Umayri site.

[13] His presidency commenced directly following La Sierra's reformation as an independent institution, after it split from Loma Linda University.

[13] He was noted for his leadership in supporting the ordination of women in the Seventh-day Adventist church, with a prominent advocate saying he was not "afraid to stand alone for truth" in that regard.

[14] Responding to President Geraty's initiative La Sierra University's board of trustees voted in November 1996 to establish the first Women's Resource Center in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.