“Oh, you dead, who at Gettysburg have baptized with your blood the second birth of freedom in America, how you are to be envied,” wrote New York Times war correspondent and grieving father Samuel Wilkeson.

Wilkeson knew that his son, 19-year-old lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson, had been injured and captured during the three-day long Battle of Gettysburg. It wasn’t until the Confederate retreat, however, that Wilkeson came across his son’s body on the battlefield and wrote those lamentations as much to help a distressed nation as to help himself find solace amidst profound anguish.

Lincoln states, “This is like a Dream I once had in Illinois,” while opening a Valentine from Columbia that contains broken chains and the 13th Amendment.

President Abraham Lincoln echoed these words in his Gettysburg Address, with some historians arguing that Lincoln was inspired by them when writing his address.

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” Lincoln declared.

Such prophetic words have forever defined the battle, mixing the religious zeal of the era with democratic ideals in an attempt to maintain the righteousness of the Union cause. How else could the American people interpret nearly 51,000 casualties during the three days of fighting that devastated both the North and South?

Less than two years later, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Union forces at Appomattox Court House, marking the virtual end of the war and ushering in a much less studied period of history: Reconstruction – the second birth of freedom that so many had been hoping for.

The nation ended its 150^th commemoration of the Civil War by celebrating the anniversary of the peace agreement with Bells Across the Land. Our own Glatfelter bells rang for four minutes – one minute to recognize each year of the war.

However, just because the 150^th commemoration of the Civil War has formally ended does not mean that public interest in the legacies of the war has passed.

“The Sesquicentennial has raised a legion of new issues, especially about the continuity of the war and Reconstruction, which are going to be the fuel of inquiry and self-examination for a long time to come,” said Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Director of the Civil War Era Studies. “The great figures of the war -- Grant and Lee, for instance -- will always attract interest, but I expect there will be a lot of curiosity over the next few years about their roles in Reconstruction, which were just as crucial as their roles as battlefield commanders.”

Recently, the National Park Service has committed itself to studying and raising awareness about Reconstruction.

Around campus, Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute will be focusing on the impact and legacies of Reconstruction Era as well, and will use its annual summer conference to create a unique dialogue around that time period.

“We should take great satisfaction in the educational richness of this commemorative period,” said Executive Director of the Civil War Institute Peter Carmichael, “but we need to look beyond the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War in order to advance the public discussion about Reconstruction. Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute will continue this conversation with our audiences as we look beyond Appomattox and explore the revolutionary legacy of the Civil War.”

Students will have the opportunity to engage in those themes in and out of the classroom, as well. Both the Civil War era studies minor and the public history minor offer courses examining the Civil War and its legacies, while the CWI offers students the opportunity to gain practical experience interpreting history through the CWI Fellowship and the Pohanka Internship.

Check out our media coverage from the 150th Commemoration of the Civil War:

Allen Guelzo interviewed by CBS on anniversary of Lincoln's death

Allen Guelzo interviewed by WITF Smart Talk radio on the anniversary of Lincoln's assassination

Peter Carmichael hosted on WITF Smart Talk Radio to discuss Bells Across the Land

Allen Guelzo published in Washington Post about what might have happened if Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated

Allen Guelzo mentioned in NY Times piece on Dedication Day

College mentioned in WITF article about preservation of Lee's headquarters

Special thanks to Musselman Library's Special Collections for all of their help with research and artwork for this story.

Threats to the United States’ national security are everywhere, and they come in a variety of forms: terrorism, cyber attacks, espionage, and weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

This year alone, Americans have heard about Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine, nuclear arms in Iran, attacks from groups like ISIS, al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, Ebola, and climate change.

These national security and intelligence issues were the focus of this year’s Eisenhower Institute (EI) Undergraduate Fellows program, headed by Harold G. Evans Chair of Eisenhower Leadership Studies and political science Prof. Shirley Anne Warshaw. The eight EI Undergraduate Fellows brought expert speakers to campus and generated thoughtful discourse among Gettysburgians.

“National security and intelligence are important topics to cover in any public policy or leadership conversation,” said Warshaw. “With this year being the tenth anniversary of the 9–11 Commission, we felt it was an appropriate time to see how the intelligence community is working in a post-9–11 world, ten years after establishing a coordinated intelligence effort.”

One of the speakers who came to campus was Keith J. Masback ’87, CEO of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF), a nonprofit foundation focused on the development and application of geospatial intelligence to address national security objectives. In addition to helping recruit many of his professional colleagues to speak on campus during this series, Masback also moderated a panel, “How Terrorism is Funded Through Transnational Organized Crime.”

“It is now more important than ever to have conversations about intelligence and national security,” Masback said. “We have become part of a broad, global community. There’s not a single field Gettysburg students will enter that isn’t going to have global connections.”

Political Science major Logan Phillips ’15 is one of the Eisenhower Institute Fellows who worked with Masback over the past academic year. He appreciated the vast experience and connections that Masback brought to this year’s panel series.

“Keith was a driving force behind this year’s series,” Phillips said. “He was really able to impress upon us how poaching and human trafficking and all of these activities that you don’t really think about are connected and fund everything from ISIS to Boko Haram.”

“Everything is a lot more interconnected than you would think, and I think that was the big take away from the panel,” Phillips continued.

According to Masback, though, the significance of this interconnectedness is often lost among people working in the field, which is why he stressed the importance of this global awareness to Gettysburg students.

“Even within the intelligence community, you might hear something like, ‘What does an elephant or rhinoceros mean to me?’ It’s important to discuss connecting the dots, because terrorist organizations use poachers and the sale of illegal wildlife products to fund their illicit activities,” Masback said.

“These are very real, tangible threats to national security,” he continued. “Unfortunately though, these topics are often relegated to second- or third-tier status, because people don’t recognize the fundamental, interconnected nature of threats. That’s why we need to raise the level of discourse around these issues.”

He also noted that these issues are now being recognized at the highest levels of government as national security threats, and that organizations like the one that he works for strive to foster dialogue between NGOs, governments, and academia to “create a more cohesive framework for dealing with the problem.”

Masback’s panel on terrorism funding was one of a series of events held by the Eisenhower Institute. Other events explored topics like cybersecurity and post 9–11 intelligence strategies. Expert speakers include Richard C. LaMagna ’70, former U.S. senior Drug Enforcement Agency official; Letitia Long, former Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Fred Fielding ’61, former White House Counsel and member of the 9–11 Commission; and James Clapper, director of National Intelligence.

Check out the Gettysburg magazine for an exclusive interview with Masback. Find out what he thinks about terrorism funding and what the intelligence community is doing about it.

Picture palm trees silhouetted against a backdrop of ocean. Surfing. Hiking. Adirondack chairs shielded from view by a circle of dense pines. Eating out, no dishes.  What do you think and dream about when you plan a vacation? Most likely you’re on the computer, at least for part of your research process. What runs through your mind as you click and scroll?

That’s what McLean Donnelly ’07 wants to know. He’s the User Experience Lead for Expedia, Inc., in Seattle, leading teams of UX and content strategists for Expedia’s Flights and Activities products. With a major in Political Science, an MBA, and a background as a former speechwriter, Donnelly’s career has taken a few turns, but all roads lead back to people.

Even if you don’t know what they are, you may have heard of the abbreviations UX and UI, or “user experience” and “user interface.” Both terms are used today to describe the way people interact with web design; at its simplest, user interface encompasses the looks and guts of a design, while user experience is about the overall feeling people get from a website.  

“User experience is a more holistic framework about a customer’s experience,” McLean said. “UI wouldn’t account for what would happen if you got to the airport after your flight left, but UX does. It accounts for things like, are you using your phone? Did you print out your ticket? What happens when you get to the airport? We consider the end-to-end consumer experience.”

And yes, he’s also interested in knowing what you think as you click. The user experience lab allows the team at Expedia to monitor facial expressions and eye movements as prospective customers navigate the site.

“[At Expedia] we love speaking directly with consumers. We’re a very consumer-centric company. We like to observe our customers in the user experience lab—at times you can tell when they’re feeling stress or excitement,” said Donnelly. “In the future, we’re working on different, new ways we can add more pleasure to the experience of purchasing flights. It’ll be exciting to look back in a few years.”

Looking back

Donnelly is originally from Minnesota. He first came to Gettysburg after visiting his sister, who lived in the Washington, D.C. area.  He liked that the college was situated in close proximity to the city, but was also near the historical battlefields.

“I was a political junkie,” he said. “I liked that I could be near and not in D.C. And I loved the campus. As soon as I drove up, I immediate gravitated toward the College.”

He loved politics so much so, in fact, that his first job after college was working as a press assistant in the office of then governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. He worked his way up to head speechwriter, a position he’d hold for a couple of years before transitioning into a senior communications position at Target to gain some private sector experience.

“You can do a lot with a political science degree,” Donnelly said. “It gives you the ability to look at things holistically and break down complex problems. What I learned at Gettysburg wasn’t the ins and outs of politics as much as it was the ability to learn and communicate.”

At Target, Donnelly’s work focused on digital content strategy.  He worked with feedback loops around how customers were interacting with Target and then translated those findings into roadmaps for the consumer experience. It was there he got the hunch that this work would become more and more important as technology grew.

“I just knew user experience was something every company would be hiring for—they didn’t know it at the time, but I saw it.”

Donnelly’s next step was to follow that hunch. He joined a startup called Novu, where he learned a lot about a little bit of everything: “I was Novu’s seventh employee. I started by wearing my content hat and became a user experience manager. After two years, what I learned was remarkable. The company ended up growing from nothing to 70 employees.”

After diving deeper into the world of user experience, he attended Saint Thomas University for his MBA to learn business fundamentals, knowledge he felt was lacking in the world of user experience.  After gaining that skill set, Donnelly’s next stop would be Expedia, which draws over 80 million shoppers and books over 30 million flights every year.

“I knew I wanted to head out west, which I thought was the epicenter of this work,” he said.  “I wanted to work for a large ecosystem with a lot of traffic. Working in the travel industry is fun and complex. It’s one of the better professional experiences I’ve ever had.”

(Not) checking boxes

Outside of the office, Donnelly is an active volunteer and has served on the board of several organizations. In Minnesota, he helped found the LEAD project, which connects young professionals to nonprofits that need volunteers with skills like web design and other experience.

“There’s currently a huge gap around millennials not being active in the community, but volunteering is a wonderful way for young professionals to donate their knowledge and time while also fleshing out their skills,” he said. “Once you build [volunteering] into your life, it’s just like anything else—working out, [etc.]. It becomes routine.”

Volunteering also builds experience, and that is what ultimately shapes your career, Donnelly said.

“I spent five months studying in South Africa and it really stretched my comfort zone and changed my worldview. Success isn’t about checking off boxes on a LinkedIn profile. At Gettysburg I learned to be a person of substance who could work well with others and learn quickly.”     

If there is one thing that Tom Azelby ’86 has learned as an entrepreneur, it is that if you are committed to your business plan, you have to be willing to change and adapt it.

His second business venture illustrates this point perfectly.

Azelby had been approached by fellow Gettysburgian George Allgair ’87 about creating a company to provide Internet services to business clients. Allgair had previous telecom experience and Azelby had the start-up experience to make it happen. However, timing was not on their side.

“It was new technology, really the beginning of DSL and broadband,” Azelby explained. “Right after we started this venture, though, was the dotcom bust. Then we had the telecom bust, and after that was 9/11. A lot of companies who were doing exactly what we did went under, and we knew that we had to change our plan.”

What they ended up creating is Bandwave Systems, a company that works as a broadband aggregator – one stop shopping for any business’s bandwidth needs nation-wide and around the globe.

“Those first five years are really tough,” Azelby stated. “The next two, for us at least, were even worse. You have to be committed to it, though, because while it can be painful, it is also incredibly rewarding.”

“Partnerships and startups are a risky business,” Azelby continued. “I like to tell people that I will only go into business with Gettysburg grads because each time I’ve done it, it was with another alum.”

In fact, Azelby maintains that Gettysburg College has a particular entrepreneurial edge that enables its alums to excel in business.

“Gettysburg produces entrepreneurs,” Azelby stated. “Part of being an entrepreneur is getting out and telling people your story, and Gettysburg made that very easy to do. I often find in my travels that many Gettysburg alumni have started their own businesses, and I am confident that their Gettysburg College experience played a role in that decision.”

That being said, Azelby was drawn to entrepreneurialism at an early age, starting when he first began advertising a lawn maintenance service in his local newspaper. An interested customer liked his work ethic and subsequently offered him a position as a vendor at New York’s Yankee Stadium.

In fact, it was at Yankee Stadium that he learned a few invaluable business lessons, and he credits that experience with opening the doors to Gettysburg for him.

“My admissions counselor seemed quite interested in that experience,” Azelby recalled. “It played a big role in getting me into Gettysburg.”

Azelby frequently brings his kids to Gettysburg to show them around campus. They are shown here pointing out his picture on an SAE fraternity composite.

A political science major, some of his favorite classes were actually the ones that enabled him to take advantage of the College’s historic location.

“I took [Prof. Emeritus] Gabor Borrit’s history class about the Battle and absolutely loved it,” Azelby stated. “I found the town of Gettysburg, the battlefields, and the campus to be quite different than where I grew up in Northern Jersey. The entire scene in Gettysburg is very meditative.”

Outside of the classroom, he played for the football team and joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

Shortly after his graduation from Gettysburg College, Azelby and Chris Hilburn ’86 started their first business venture – Beetlehead, a clothing company for resort-style apparel.

“We got lucky at first, selling our products to college kids,” Azelby reflected. “Then we got into a few resorts, and then we started getting into major department stores and national chains. We had a really good run for about nine years, but eventually got in over our heads.”

Shortly after that, another of his Gettysburg connections reached out to him with a business proposition.

“George was one of my fraternity brothers, and he was really the spark for Bandwave Systems,” Azelby said. “He was working for a start-up telecom company out in Denver when he realized that he could do this on his own back East. He reached out to me because he knew of my business experience and he knew that I was someone he could trust. He said we should start this company together, and that’s what we did.”

15 years later, Azelby now oversees Bandwave’s strategic planning, as well as their Customer Relationship and Marketing teams. He credits much of his success to his experience at Gettysburg.

“Gettysburg has had a big impact on my life, all in very positive ways,” Azelby said. “It’s introduced me to my business partners. It’s taught me how to communicate, how to work on a project, how to network and build relationships and have fun. Essentially, Gettysburg has taught me how to succeed. No matter what you were doing on campus, Gettysburg had this energy to it, this entrepreneurial energy, and I don’t know if you get that anywhere else.”

Climate change is a topic that’s been discussed by scientists, politicians, and citizens alike, with varying levels of interest and intensity over the years. Most recently, the Pope issued a statement sharing his views on global warming, and the issue went again from cool to hot.

On campus, Dori Gorczyca ’15 has steadily worked to study and communicate the effects of climate change throughout her undergraduate years, initially becoming interested in its impact through her environmental studies classes, and later through a competitive GeoCorps internship at Glacier National Park in Montana. Now, her passion has turned into a full time job with the National Park Service.

“The Geo Corps internship is an internship that only graduate students usually get,” said Prof. Sarah Principato, her environmental studies advisor and associate professor of environmental studies. “[Gorczyca’s] unique interdisciplinary background helped her rise to the top of the pile.”

“Dori’s work is truly an exemplar for the environmental studies department’s interdisciplinary mission, as it combines the natural sciences with digital humanities’ strategies of climate communication,” said Prof. Salma Monani, associate professor of environmental studies.

As a double Environmental Studies and History major, Gorczyca was interested in using her background to explore not just the science of climate change, but also the way in which research is communicated to the public.

“When I met Prof. Principato my freshman year, I told her that I was really interested in both the humanities and sciences. She told me I could do both. Until then, it didn’t occur to me that I could,” said Gorczyca. “When it came time to do my senior honors thesis, I told her what I was interested in, and she looped in Prof. Monani. Having professors who were willing to work together made a huge difference and helped me get feedback and new perspectives. It made my project better in the end.”

Initially, Gorczyca thought she’d study glacial geology in Alaska—Monani’s Ph.D. research was based there—but the internship at Glacier National Park ended up providing the perfect fit.  Before working there in the summer of her junior year, Gorczyca took Principato’s course, Glaciers and Records of Climate Change.

“I took so much from that class, and that made me excited about bringing glaciology to the public, and to more people who don’t have that background,” she said. “I wanted to take that class and make it accessible to everyone— not just people interested in geology.”

So she ended up creating a website that explains the research surrounding climate change and its effect on glaciers, along with the history of the environment in the park.

The site’s tone leans conversational rather than academic, and the language is digestible and engaging, asking the reader, “Is it hot out here?” and “What is a glacier, anyways?” There are also audio clips of other scientists talking about climate change, contrasted with “just for fun” activities like a quiz asking, “What kind of glacier are you?”

The focus on fun and on the park is purposeful.

“If you can get people to care about a place, you can get people to work towards conservation and mitigation,” said Gorczyca.

And so far, it seems to be working.

“Not only did [Gorczyca] create a website to communicate information about climate change and the park using her natural science and humanities background, but she assessed it by surveying members who visited the website and had some really terrific results we hope to publish,” said Monani.

The survey results so far indicate that visitors to the website leave caring more about preservation and climate change after having read about Glacier National Park than they did before their visit, Gorczyca said. The results—a true product of interdisciplinary work—are being pitched and have the opportunity to run in not a scientific journal, but a communications one. 

The park has since hired Gorczyca as a full time interpretive park ranger during the warmer months. She’s responsible for leading guided hikes and programs and engaging visitors during their time at the park.  When Gorczyca’s work as a park ranger ends for the season, she will head to South Florida for an internship at Big Cypress National Preserve, engaging local students in natural science activities in the Everglades.

What the future beyond that holds for Gorczyca, she’s not yet sure, but there are no shortage of opportunities.

“That’s why I love Gettysburg so much,” she said. “This interdisciplinary focus—approaching problems from multiple perspectives and having a collaborative atmosphere—it’s given me confidence. I can go to graduate school, I can pursue environmental studies, I can do a variety of things because I have both backgrounds. I can do anything.” 

A job in the financial industry with a degree in history.

A mid-life career change.

A move to another continent.

These and more transformations proved to be advantageous new opportunities instead of daunting challenges for Bill Seeman ’73, and he credits his Gettysburg education for that.

“I think what you learn from taking advantage of all of the many opportunities available at Gettysburg is to not be afraid of new opportunities – to embrace them. My experiences at Gettysburg really taught me not to be daunted by new situations,” he explained. “You have to look at things in a positive way and make them happen to your advantage.”

Seeman’s first job right out of college really tested that confidence – having been a history major, he applied for and was offered a job in the banking industry. He pursued this career path at the encouragement of his academic advisor and personal mentor, Charles Glatfelter '46.

“He had a reputation as being an excellent professor, but very tough,” Seeman reflected. “He disciplined us pretty well so that we knew how to research properly and were prepared for a number of different things through that capability.”

A few years later, an opportunity opened up for Seeman in international banking, so he and his wife Karen packed up and moved to London. After five years of living abroad, they returned to the States when an opportunity in financial services at Merrill Lynch opened up. From there, he was recruited to a vice president position with Ameriprise by fellow Gettysburgian Nate Pugliese ’98.

“I see a lot of Gettysburg grads in my travels, especially now in financial services. It’s a very well known name in the business that I’m in, so I bump into Gettysburgians on a pretty regular basis,” Seeman noted.

It is his gratefulness for the confidence that his Gettysburg education has prepared him with that has motivated his most recent commitment: an endowed scholarship to help current and future students benefit from the same experiences that he did.

“I’ve had a great education, a great start in life as a result of my education at Gettysburg. If I can help give others the experiences that I’ve had, then that’s a good thing.”

Seeman’s endowed scholarship is just one of many that supports the comprehensive campaign Gettysburg Great: The Campaign for our College, which entered the public phase at the beginning of this academic year. Through bolstering scholarship support, Gettysburg seeks to increase the inclusiveness of its campus community, invest in the talent and promise of students, and keep student debt to a minimum.

To date, the campaign has raised $99 million of its $150 million goal.

News of civil rights campaigns saturated the news in the mid-1960s.

There was the campaign in Birmingham that ended with high-pressure fire hoses being turned on the nonviolent protestors. After that was a church bombing in Birmingham, the murder of Civil Rights activists by the KKK, and the March to Selma that ended in such extreme violence that it was referred to as “Bloody Sunday” in the media.

Gettysburg College students could not ignore it – recruiters even came to campus seeking volunteers to register African Americans to vote in the South.

Despite the inherent danger in committing to the cause, it did not take much convincing for Richard Hutch ’67 to volunteer.

“It was not a matter of reasonable or rational choice but rather a moment of unreason,” Hutch said. “I knew that I had to go. It was almost as if fate was pulling me there.”

In fact, Hutch – who was one of four other Gettysburg College students to volunteer – felt that the historic location of the College necessitated his action.

“I would often walk across the battlefields late at night, and turn my thoughts to the 50,000 dead, wounded, and missing from three days of battle. I was shocked to think that happened right there right under my feet,” Hutch stated.

“At the same time, we had coverage on the news of the civil rights campaigns,” Hutch continued. “It was shocking, especially combined with my fantasies about the battlefield. There we were 100 years after the war and nothing had changed profoundly to alter race relations.”

Hutch volunteered with SCOPE – the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project – and quickly found himself heading south to one of the many rural towns in Southern Alabama. Along the way, he met up with other SCOPE volunteers and spent a week being trained in the art of political activism by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other notable activists of the time.

“This man was the man I really needed to meet and be with and participate in the movement with at this moment in my life. My identity was tied up in his identity and work,” Hutch explained when reflecting on his encounters with King. “There was the spiritual impetus driving political change by way of bringing about freedom and justice for every man and woman in the South. Meeting him just affirmed that I was where I needed to be.”

Hutch passed the summer registering African Americans to vote, marching in rallies, and being keenly aware of the violence that surrounded him at every turn. He recalls being shot at in vivid detail and being assaulted while participating in a non-violent protest.

One incident took place after a large rally encouraging African Americans to vote.

“A white truck drove by and shot at us as we were leaving that meeting,” Hutch recalled. “I dove for cover behind some bushes and caught some gun pellets in the cuff of my pants. I still get very nervous whenever I think about that.”

Hutch relived all of these experiences during a two-day symposium held on campus that explored the legacies of the civil rights campaigns of 1965. Watch video from the event here.

After that transformational summer, Hutch wasted no time embracing his new identity as an activist. A philosophy major, Hutch ran for president of the Student Senate, a position which he held until the fall semester of his senior year, and raised awareness about issues related to the Vietnam War.

“The Vietnam War was getting into high pitch during the fall of my junior year,” Hutch explained. “It allowed me to maintain my activism and refocus on the issue of the moment.”

It was a year after his graduation that he heard of King’s assassination over the radio. Now a student at the Yale Divinity School, he experienced an acute grief reaction so powerful that it only confirmed his passion – pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in Religion and Psychological Studies.

He has since taken a position at the University of Queensland, Australia, where he has taught and researched the history of religion and the nature of human integrity and moral development.

“It’s been wonderful living in Australia,” Hutch stated. “I’ve met my wife of 32 years here, had two kids, been back and forth to American and around the world almost annually. I’ve seen more of the world than I ever thought I would have. I’ve had a good life, a good professional life, and I am very grateful for everything that has happened.”

When Kathya Lopez ’18 set foot on Gettysburg College’s campus, she already knew she wanted art in her future.  

The first-year student from South Central Los Angeles discovered the art world when she interned for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in high school with the education department.  She never dreamed she’d return the following summer for a week-long intensive program as part of the prestigious 2015 Andrew W. Mellon Summer Academy and Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship program.

“I grew up in a low-income area with gangs, drugs, and violence. I was introduced to art and loved it,” said Lopez. “LACMA has this great program where children under the age of 17 get to be ‘members’ of the museum.” 

The membership gave Lopez the opportunity to attend the museum exhibitions for free, which further expanded her knowledge in art history and introduced her to community outreach through art.

When Lopez heard about the opportunity to apply to the Andrew W. Mellon Summer Academy at LACMA, she decided to “take a chance” and apply. Five museums nation-wide participate in the program, and only 15 students are accepted at each museum.

“The purpose of the program is to diversify the field of curators in museums,” said Lopez. “I believe this is important because it will create different perspectives in the way we see art.”

The 2015 Mellon Summer Academy students with Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of LACMA, Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

The program is specifically geared towards undergraduate students from historically underrepresented groups in the curatorial field, and has two components, the Mellon Summer Academy, and the Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship.  Following each Summer Academy, students submit supplemental materials for fellowship consideration. Then, two students are awarded multi-year fellowships at each partner museum. 

Finding a Mentor

Lopez found Gettysburg College as a part of her acceptance and mentorship in the One Voice Scholars program, which has a relationship with the College. One Voice prepares and places inner city Los Angeles high school students across 30 colleges and universities in the nation.

She applied to Gettysburg because she learned it was a place of opportunity. “I wanted to go to a college where I could visit different places. I never would have imagined being able to visit museums in Washington D.C. through my art history classes and visit New York City through CAB,” she said. 

During her first year, Lopez attended many lectures, gallery openings, and career-related workshops. She found a mentor in Art & Art History Prof. Felicia Else, who taught her first-year seminar, “Florence: Art, Money, and Power in the Renaissance City,” and serves as her current advisor. 

“I learned so much from Prof. Else. She has given me great advice and was kind enough to write my letter of recommendation for the program,” said Lopez.

Else introduced her to Prof. Shannon Egan in the Schmucker Art Gallery, sparking an interest in the curatorial side of art.

“Kathya is one of the strongest and most ambitious first-year students I have had,” said Else. “She’s well-positioned to work in community outreach or the curatorial field due to her background, museum experience, and outgoing personality.”  

Else stressed the high level of competition for the Mellon Summer Academy, “It is unusual for me to see a first-year student already have experience with interning at a prestigious institution like LACMA and also get accepted into a program like the Andrew W. Mellon Summer Academy and Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship. Opportunities like these in the arts are competitive at all levels- even for graduates and graduate students.”

Transcending Self

2015 Summer Academy student Kathya Lopez standing next to Reciting Poetry before the Yellowing of Autumn by Wu Li, Photo © Museum Associates/LACMA

During the week-long Summer Academy, Lopez was able to meet with a variety of professionals who work at LACMA and learn about their career paths. The students met with local artists, visited another museum, and curated their own virtual exhibition from LACMA’s collection, called “Transcending Self.”

“One of the most challenging aspects of the week was finding a theme for our virtual exhibition,” said Lopez. “I tend to think more concretely, and the theme for our exhibition had to be more conceptual and abstract. Understanding the theme and learning how to connect that with my chosen artwork was a challenge.”  

The artwork Lopez focused on was, Reciting Poetry before the Yellowing of Autumn by Wu Li, a Chinese landscape. “I was able to bring prior knowledge I had learned from Prof. Yan Sun’s ‘Arts of China’ course I took the previous semester,” she said. 

Lopez applied for the Fellowship, and wants to continue exploring the curatorial field. “I know now that curating is not solely one person managing it, but includes many people to get a show open to the public.”

Every year during commencement season, the question of how to live a meaningful life is tossed in with a mix of caps and gowns and bounced across campuses in the words of speeches.  It’s also written about by reminiscent professionals looking to impart their own words of wisdom.

What will you do? How will you make an impact? What will make you “great?”

David Brooks of the New York Times asked graduates to think about their “eulogy virtues” rather than their “résumé virtues”:

“The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral—whether you were kind, brave, honest, or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?”

Gettysburg College students are asked to think about their time on campus as preparing them for not only just landing great jobs, but also leading great lives.

Indeed, when Allan Kawala ’14 left the Gettysburg College campus, he had two straightforward—but rather lofty—goals in mind: to live a life of meaning and to serve others rather than himself. A year after graduating, Kawala shares how this mission has driven and shaped his leadership of multiple initiatives in his home country of Malawi, Africa.

Shifting the focus away from “self”

Kawala came to Gettysburg from Lilongwe, Malawi, initially attracted to the history of the College and the personal connection he was able to establish with faculty and staff before even setting foot on campus. While a student, he became a leader, participating in key initiatives for programs like the Garthwait Leadership Center, the Eisenhower Institute, and the Center for Public Service, among others.  

This work, Kawala said, was initially responsible for helping him to shift the focus away from himself and to how he could help others.

“When I was at Gettysburg, I was given a platform to think about my role in the world. I didn’t want to go to Gettysburg for four years and come out just thinking about me. I wanted my education to benefit the Malawi nation, to benefit Africans, to benefit the world,” he said.  “My Gettysburg education allowed me to think about who I am, what I want to do with my life and how I can make a difference in my community.”

Since graduating, Kawala has specifically focused on youth and community development, two areas he was also passionate about during his time at Gettysburg, when he led a Project for Peace, a group tasked with discussing the importance of embracing difference and striving toward peace.

Serving others

Kawala is now the executive director of an organization he cofounded, called the Institute for Community Innovation (ICI) in Africa. The organization is led by a group of young college students and professionals across the world who have a big goal in mind: to create lasting innovative and collaborative solutions that address socio-economic challenges in Africa.  Specifically, the group is focused on reducing the economic disparities between urban and rural life in Malawi through education, innovation, technology, empowerment, and transformation.

“What I enjoy and love about ICI Africa is the fact that I get to work with Maurice Phiri ’17 and James Tayali, my cofounder—individuals who I have mentored and were part of my Davis Project for Peace in 2012,” Kawala said. “It’s great to work with individuals who are passionate, determined, solution-driven, and work for a positive impact in their community.”

Kawala and his team are building partnerships with others who are interested in supporting the work, including UC Berkeley, the Africa Rising Foundation, the International Youth Foundation, SmileyGo, among other international and local organizations. They even attracted the mentorship of Ndaba Mandela, the CEO and Co-founder of Africa Rising Foundation and the grandson of late President Nelson Mandela, who is helping them make a sustainable impact in Malawi before expanding into other sub-Sahara African countries.

“At the end of the day, his support is huge. Succeeding in our work comes with and means immense pressure, but to have that connection like one we have with Ndaba Mandela is exciting and empowering,” Kawala said. “It reminds us why we are doing what we are doing.”

Kawala is also working collaboratively with EducationUSA Malawi, the Mandela Washington YALI fellows, and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Information Resource Center to facilitate sessions on nurturing youth entrepreneurs in Malawi and to support their learning and career trajectories.

“With Education USA, I help students who are applying to U.S. colleges and universities. I help them through the application process, give them advice, and find them mentors and people they can learn from,” he said.  

“It’s about giving them the tools. We want to give [the Malawi youth] what they need to be job creators rather than just job seekers.”

Staying connected to Gettysburg

Kawala also continues to stay connected to his professors and peers, drawing energy and support from their phone calls and emails when given the chance to reconnect.  

“I’m still in touch with a lot of the people at Gettysburg, and they give me good advice on how I can improve in my work—that’s something huge. I don’t think a lot of people have the opportunity or that advantage where they can get advice from their professors, their supervisors, their peers,” he said.  

“When it’s someone who you trust who is saying, ‘keep going,’ it means a lot. I’m so glad I have that opportunity.”

What’s next

Kawala was recently accepted to the University of Bradford’s Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies Master’s program and is also exploring other programs through the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS), University of London.

While he’s still making decisions about where he’d like to attend graduate school, what’s for certain is that he will continue to accumulate the “eulogy virtues” that are the focus of his pursuit to give back rather than focus on himself.

As for Gettysburg, Kawala said he’s connected to this campus for life.

“Gettysburg was the place where I discovered who I am and my role in the world. It’s no longer about me. It’s about the community. I learned that life is about doing something, not about getting something.”

_

As part of Kawala’s Project for Peace, he and his group produced a song to promote peace and collaboration. They create a new song every year—the next one will be released in the coming months.

Watch the video from the latest song—Peace Project Song Vol. 2—below. 

The lifestyle industry is changing. What once consisted almost entirely of alternative, avant-garde businesses promoting the allure of the surf-and-sun subculture in Southern California, or the artisanal-hunting hipster movement of Brooklyn, has grown.

Now a mainstream, multi-billion dollar industry, lifestyle businesses promote anything and everything from health and wellness, makeup and beauty, runway and Main Street fashion, to furniture and home goods, travel—both local and exotic—and, of course, the quintessential foundations for a well-rounded life—art, music, literature, and food.

The reason why a fringe industry is now becoming an economic powerhouse in such a short period of time is simple: technology.

“There has never been a better time to be a creative person because there has never been so much access as there is right now,” said Carson Kressley ’91. Perhaps the College’s foremost lifestyle expert, the former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy host and author of the upcoming lifestyle guide Does This Book Make My Butt Look Big? argues that the explosion of technology has increased access—not just to these lifestyle businesses and experts, but to communities of people who identify with those brands, as well.

“If you are willing to put the work and time into it, there are opportunities for people that simply didn’t exist ten years ago,” Kressley stated. “However, with more opportunity comes more room for competition, so you have to differentiate yourself. You have to cut through a lot of the social media white noise or else you will get lost in the sea of lifestyle experts.”

Doing your homework

Gettysburgians are responding to the appeal of entrepreneurship in the lifestyle industry, but they are doing their homework first.

For Kirsty Bryant-Hassler ’12, that meant taking on a lot of temporary and part time work as she determined her career path.

“I’m always thankful that Gettysburg allowed me to forge my own path as a student,” Bryant-Hassler said. “I had the freedom to think and create and be who I wanted to be, and I knew I wanted my career to follow a similar path.”

The path she forged ran the gamut from fashion internships to boutique sales and copy writing. She’s covered New York Fashion week, helped design a Vogue China fashion shoot with Gisele Bündchen, and worked on a campaign for Tiffany’s. And those are just the highlights.

This wealth of experience in the fashion world got her thinking—if she could create looks for other companies, build campaigns, and even write about new trends, why couldn’t she do this for herself?

The result was Millennial Style Maven, a blog that focuses on empowering young working women through daily doses of fashion advice and lifestyle inspiration.

“Taking on so many jobs has really been a blessing. I’ve been able to find what I really want to do—I’ve been able to build my brand and turn that into a business.”

Maintaining a brand

When Katie Bogue Miller ’02 set out to build her fourth startup, focus groups helped her uncover the next evolution of her interests in fashion, makeup, and a healthier, more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Katie Bogue Miller ’02, right, with her Love Goodly cofounder Justine Lassoff, left.

What she and her cofounder Justine Lassoff created is Love Goodly, a subscription box and e-commerce platform that focuses on eco-friendly, cruelty-free products that offer the high quality value consumers expect.

“My passion has always been in sustainability, in making more conscious decisions, in helping others be more aware of the products they are buying,” Bogue Miller said. “I also love fashion and shopping and beauty, and as the industry has become more mainstream, we’ve been able to sell really high end beauty products that also happen to be cruelty-free and eco-friendly, too.”

Having such a unique mission has helped Bogue Miller and her cofounder develop an equally distinct community of consumers. In fact, through social media, Bogue Miller has been able to create a devoted following of like-minded people—and they share more than products found through Love Goodly, too.

“Part of our brand is about building a more health conscious, community focused lifestyle,” Bogue Miller explained. “We all share a similar mission. It’s fun to be a part of that and to also foster that—it is a very positive community.”

What this means is that not all of their posts are about selling a product. Instead, they will post a really great vegan recipe, a picture of something—nature, art, music—that is inspiring them at the moment, or anything else that they know will resonant with their audience. This strategy has helped Bogue Miller maintain the authenticity of her brand, while also cutting through the “white noise” of social media experts, as Kressley described.

But the impact goes both ways.

“We see our community, we hear their positive comments—it really keeps us going,” Bogue Miller stated. “It is what inspires us to keep bringing out great products and to keep making a difference.”

Competing with yourself

Kayte Demont ’12 has always identified herself with the entrepreneurial spirit. She liked to create and found the idea of working for herself very appealing. However, when she founded Mass Musings shortly after graduation, it was more of an outlet to satisfy her interests in writing and fashion.

In fact, she held numerous jobs in communications, marketing, and technology before making the decision to turn the creative inspiration blog into a full time business venture in October 2015.

“I think I was a little bit scared of the non-traditional path when I graduated, even though I wasn’t a traditional student or learner,” Demont said. “It was a pleasant surprise when the journey with Mass Musings not only continued, but really took off, and I realized that this was something that I could do. It’s not easy, and I certainly have my work cut out for me, but I’m happy.”

Case in point—Demont has a devoted audience of nearly 13,000 followers. But she realizes she isn’t just competing with other lifestyle brands. Her success is dependent on not only standing out from the “saturated market,” but on standing out from herself, too.

“You have to constantly challenge yourself to push the envelope and build upon the foundation you have already laid out,” she stated. “Otherwise, your content—your creations—they start to feel stale.”

Staying authentic

According to Kressley, authenticity is key. The most important thing a creative entrepreneur can do is to constantly ask themselves, “Is this on brand?”

“Details matter,” the celebrity stylist and fashion designer stated. “You can’t worry about popularity or what anyone else is doing; it’ll cause you to lose focus. Instead, focus on authenticity. Your audience will see it, and they’ll respond to it.”

Authenticity hinges on communications, though. Success in the lifestyle industry requires the ability to craft and maintain a story that resonates with the lifestyle one’s audience wishes to achieve.

“I hear this a lot, but the industry is all about story-telling. It’s showing people how they can get a piece of that life, and it all starts with communicating a story,” Kressley said. “Gettysburg does a great job of teaching its students how to be effective communicators—people who are articulate and confident and educated on a lot of different subjects. That’s why my education continues to pay dividends in my career now.”

Kayla Britt ’17 attends Gettysburg over 55 years after Judy Keyes Guss-Nelson ’60 graduated, but other than time, there’s little to distinguish the hard working spirit both women brought to campus.

Britt, a junior Biology major, writes for the Gettysburgian newspaper, serves as a program coordinator for the Center for Public Service, and partners with community organizations like Big Brothers and Big Sisters. Like Guss-Nelson, she’s also a scientist. This past summer, she interned at the National Institute of Mental Health in the Amgen Scholars Program in Bethesda, Maryland, analyzing functional MRI scans to determine the effect of reward on the brain activity of patients suffering from depression. With a strong interest in psychiatry and neurology, Britt hopes to become a medical doctor for underserved populations in rural or urban areas.

Guss-Nelson was the first in her family to pursue an undergraduate degree, paying for it with money she saved from babysitting, cleaning houses, and working as an AT&T telephone operator. Her mother never graduated from high school. Her father bypassed an opportunity to attend Johns Hopkins University when Guss-Nelson was born. The oldest of six children, Guss-Nelson felt the pressures of responsibility early in life, taking care of her siblings when her single mother had to work to support their family. They didn’t have a lot of money.

Today, six decades later, Guss-Nelson continues to live frugally and has not accumulated great wealth, yet she’s decided to commit nearly everything she has to Gettysburg College. Over the last several years she has made outright gifts to establish the Judith Keyes Guss-Nelson, Class of 1960, Women in Science Scholarship—of which Britt is the first recipient.

“My selection as the recipient of the Judith Keys Guss-Nelson ’60 Women in Science Scholarship is truly an honor, and I feel so grateful to be the beneficiary of Ms. Guss-Nelson’s generosity,” said Britt. “This scholarship has enabled me to attend Gettysburg College, pursue my education, and grow as a student and an individual.”

Guss-Nelson’s vision for her scholarship is centered on just that—helping other women pursue their career goals and providing them with the means to overcome financial and other challenges. She said her daughter, Kirsten A. Guss ’89, who also attended Gettysburg, was only able to do so because of her scholarship. She graduated with a degree in Biology, pursued her Ph.D., and now teaches biology at Dickinson College.

“I want women today to be able to go to school, to learn all they can, and reach or exceed their goals,” Guss-Nelson said. “You cannot end at high school. There’s just so much to learn. I mean, I’m still learning.”

Guss-Nelson was one of seven female chemistry majors in her graduating class of 1960. At a time when predominantly only men entered science and medicine fields, she pursued a career conducting research on RNA, or ribonucleic acid, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Her career took a few turns over the years, and she’s had to adapt. She left NIH after getting married and stayed at home to raise her children, moving from the east coast to the mountains when she wasn’t satisfied with the local schools. After her divorce in her forties, she returned to the workforce to support her family.

“I thought I’d do more biochemistry, but the only place that paid anything was the Husky Oil company,” she said.

She worked with a programmer to computerize the input payments for oil and gas  leases. She landed a promotion. After the company was sold to another company, she took on contract work. She started taking accounting classes at night, too. Guss-Nelson reinvented herself.

“I realized that accounting had an equation—just like in chemistry!” she said. “One side had to equal the other side just like a chemical equation had to equal both sides. It made sense to me. So I became an accountant.”

Today, Guss-Nelson is retired and living in Cody, Wyoming, but her ties to campus are strong, despite the distance. Five years ago, she attended her 50th reunion, and it was that trip in many ways that sparked her desire to give back.

“I attended a ceremony where a young woman, a medical doctor, was being honored,” she said. “I just sat there and listened to what she had achieved and I wanted to enable others to achieve like that. Gettysburg College made me the person I am. I want to show my gratitude for all that it did for me.”

What defines a good community?

Is it access to good public schools? A large law enforcement? A strong local economy? Or something else—something harder to define that some communities seem to inherently understand while others do not?

This question served as the foundation for a Sociology course on community development. Not only did students learn about community development theory and scholarship, but they also applied their examinations to a local town through a semester-long research project. These projects were then presented to the town’s mayor and council members for their consideration.

Prof. Abel, far right, with his class after they delivered their presentations to the community of Biglerville.

“I wanted to combine my interests in law enforcement into my project,” said James O’Rourke ’16,  “but the more research I did, the more I found myself questioning what makes me feel safe in any particular community.”

The answer he came up with had little to do with law enforcement and more to do with opportunities to build relationships with one’s neighbors. His final project reflected that conclusion—he pitched a multi-use skate park with an area for concession sales, picnic tables, and a lot of foot traffic.

“A skate park would be something different for them, and it could attract new people and businesses to the area,” O’Rourke explained. “If you put it in a populous area and provide opportunities for adult supervision, parks are more of a crime deterrent than a crime increaser.”

The course instructor, Prof. Andy Abel, encouraged all students to combine their personal interests and diverse academic backgrounds into their projects.

For Health Sciences major Sarah Nelson ’17 that meant exploring how she could apply concepts she was learning about in other classes to the community development of a small town a few miles away.

“It’s not often that you get the opportunity to turn a project for class into a real world presentation to the people it would be directly impacting,” Nelson said.

Her project focused on bringing specialized health care consulting to the town through telemedicine. Essentially, locations set up in town would connect people to medical professionals through use of innovative technologies and communication devices, breaking down barriers to access due to geographic limitations.

“When you have a large aging population, you have more people who need specialized medical care, but who also don’t have the mobility they once may have had,” Nelson explained. “I learned throughout the semester what a huge market there is for telemedicine, but how a lot of the research and new developments are kind of going on under the radar.”

Course projects were based on more than personal interests and theoretical knowledge, though. Abel incorporated the borough of Biglerville throughout the course in many ways in order to provide students with a solid foundation for creating practical, affordable projects that take advantage of the town’s existing attributes.  In addition to taking fieldtrips to Biglerville, students utilized current and historic maps, analyzed census data, and explored literature on community development and community building.

“Communities – small towns in particular – have a really big need to try new things,” said Prof. Andy Abel. “Simply doing things together keeps a town in the practice of working for the benefit of their community, which enables a town to be more resourceful and better prepared for those times when it needs to rely on its citizens.”

Biglerville Mayor Alyssa Biesecker has been an advocate of the project, meeting with Abel’s students and even offering suggestions and support for their projects.

“When Professor Abel approached me about this, I was a bit skeptical at first. Having been born raised here, I wasn’t sure what a handful of college students could come up with that our own community members hadn’t already,” Biesecker said. “However, the students definitely gave everyone a lot of ideas. They even sparked the audience to brainstorm ideas for things they are involved in personally. I doubt the students imagined they would create such a ripple effect when they presented their projects.”

In fact, the presentation in the town’s library drew more audience members than the students had anticipated—many of whom were actively engaged throughout the presentations, staying after to ask students about their ideas.

While the “winning” idea was a café, the presentations left the town examining new social media efforts, and, according to Biesecker, “buzzing” about the thought of a cider festival.

“I think the biggest takeaway is that it proved to me how much work goes into creating a community, from installing a new park to changing the light pole system of the town,” Nelson said. “It really showed me how important it is to come up with new ideas, too. If people don’t think outside the box, positive changes will never be made.”

There are about 27,000 cardiologists in the United States, yet more than 600,000 people die of heart disease in the U.S. every year, and rates of cardiovascular disease only continue to increase. Now more than ever, medical schools are pressed to meet the needs of a growing population of people with specialized needs and increased life expectancies.

At Gettysburg, there are multiple paths students can take to become doctors and enter careers in health care and medicine. For three alumni, it was majoring in biology. Michael Cain ’71, Blase Carabello ’69, and Arthur Feldman ’70 graduated in three consecutive years—all with Biology majors—and all went on to not only pursue cardiology, but also educate and train future cardiologists, shaping the programs that make future doctors out of today’s medical students.

Below they share more about their career path and their experience at Gettysburg—where it began.

But his first foray into the world of education happened as a third-year resident in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“I enjoy teaching the most,” he said.

His own philosophy of education has deep roots in the liberal arts education he received at Gettysburg.

“It’s hard to believe I would have wound up at the same place had I not gone to Gettysburg. The liberal arts education has an important role—it provides you with a well-rounded nature and a broad perspective on life. If you become so focused on something at that age, you risk losing opportunities,” he said.

“When Blase, Art, and I went to medical school, we trained almost exclusively with fellow medical students; we didn’t have the opportunity to understand the knowledge base of a nurse, dentist, pharmacist, occupational therapist, or other medical professionals. We learned in isolation. So with the evolution in health care in the country and more team medicine, it becomes critical that health professional students spend time training together and understand what other professionals bring to the table so they can have confidence in working as a team.”

Learn more about our science programs:

• The making of a scientist: Adam Stevens ’16 conducts research with Health Sciences Prof. Nicholas Mitchell
• The Physics of Fish: Prof. James Puckett and Julia Giannini ’18 study collective animal behavior
• Lessons from Avatar: Environmental Studies Prof. Salma Monani views environmental issues through the lens of film
• VIDEO: 60 seconds with Maria Mazza ’18
• Building tomorrow's health care leaders today
• VIDEO: 60 seconds with Beth Burton ’18
• Kaytie Innamorati ’14 conducts Alzheimer’s research
• Anthropology + Chemistry + Spanish = Career in Archaeology
• Allison Campbell ’85 named president of the American Chemical Society
• This could save endangered sea turtles
• Catching up with Janine Barr ’15
• The end of fire blight in Adams County?
• Scholarship, diversity, and STEM: Meet the Biology Department's first Gondwe Scholar
• From the football field to the field of science
• An experiment gone wrong right
• Alum advances ALS research
• Into the rainforest: Research through the eyes of two continents
• Creating leaders for a changing health care industry

It’s a time-honored tradition—students declare a major in history (or art, or philosophy, or a language), and every holiday, break, and summer vacation, are peppered with questions from their families about what they possibly could have been thinking. What do (or could!) these students want to do with a degree in that field, unless they plan on teaching?

It’s a question that Professor and Chair of the History Department Tim Shannon has posed to him frequently.

According to Shannon, the question is not what can you do with a history degree, but what do history majors do?

Apparently, only a small percentage end up in careers that are directly related to the field of history, and even fewer end up teaching.

Most follow a path that leads them to a breadth of career plans across a multitude of industries. Some work their way into the communication or media industry. Others find themselves working in government—think of the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security—or in Congress itself. More still work in social services, finance, information technology, business, law, research—you name it, they’re there.

“Just as everyone who majors in biology or health sciences does not go on to become a doctor, not everyone who studies history becomes a historian,” Shannon said. “In fact, a significant amount of our alums find themselves working in fields that have tangential connections to history, due in large part to the skills that history teaches—how to research, how to write, and how to think for yourself.”

Check out where a handful of our history alums have ended up, and get a more comprehensive view of their professional lives through our LinkedIn and alumni success pages.

Jared Leon ’14, Anti-Money Laundering/Terrorism Financing Analyst, J.P. Morgan

“I’m an anti-terrorism analyst, so everyday I need to dig deep into sources and always take holistic views of various situations. In fact, it’s what drew me to the history department when I first took one of Prof. Carmichael’s classes—the analytic needs and assessment styles that are required when diving into research. Now, I use those skills in a high security environment everyday.”

Chelsea Bucklin Fairley ‘10, Archivist and Cataloger, Freer & Sackler Gallery Archives at the Smithsonian Institution

“Being a cataloger requires me to look at an object and think of all of the possible ways in which someone might search for it online. It’s basically a more complicated and professional version of using hashtags. This is the most important aspect of my job; we want people to connect with our collections, and work every day to make those collections more accessible. It’s very fulfilling to put a collection online and then receive an inquiry from a researcher half-way around the world who now has the opportunity to view those materials from their own home.”

Eyre Price ‘86, Novelist and Attorney

“People often think of History as an esoteric pursuit, but I believe that nothing could be further from the truth.  History is absolutely, without a doubt the most practical discipline you can study for no other reason than it’s the scholarly examination of everything.  Politics.  Business.  Science.  Society. Obviously, understanding those historical trends is as important in the practice of law or writing as it is to pursuing more business-oriented careers.  What I really learned as a History major at Gettysburg was how to work.  I’m sure the technical advances that have been made since I was at Gettysburg have revolutionized how that work is done today, but when all research had to be conducted in the library and term papers had to be typed, the work load was extremely demanding.  I remember a January Term course I had that required six papers.  Six papers in under a month! So the skill I learned at Gettysburg that served me best in my life afterwards was a certain kind of work ethic.”

Jen Giambrone ’10, Digital History Fellow at White House Historical Association

“I decided to study history without any intention of teaching. I grew up going to some wonderful museums in my hometown of Rochester, New York, some of which I would later intern or work at, and early exposure made a lasting impact. I have also always had a love of storytelling - I still have a crate of "books" I wrote when I was a kid. In college, it became apparent that a career at a museum or historic site would engage both my love of writing and history, and also enable me to make a real public impact through my work.”

Brent LaRosa ’00, Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State

“I’ve always loved history.  I had good teachers in primary school and high school that made the subject interesting and relevant.  I grew up in an area (near Boston) where the local history is immediate and palpable. It was only later, after travelling and participating in international teacher exchange programs, did I think about a career in international affairs. Much of my current job involves helping our embassies overseas coordinate the U.S. Government’s many cultural, educational, and professional exchange programs in Maritime Southeast Asia.  My history degree has helped me in so many ways.  As a diplomat, a sense of history is critical to relating to foreign audiences and to telling the American story.  I use my critical thinking and writing skills every day.”

Amanda Mehring ’10, Plant Lead at the Starbucks Roasting Plant and Distribution Center

“I chose to study history because it was always a subject I enjoyed studying in school. I could always get absorbed in the story. Now, I work in leadership at Starbucks—I just celebrated four years as a partner and plant lead at Starbucks this February! We have a program called Coffee Masters that all employees go through. You learn all about different aspects of the history of coffee, such as where and how it is grown, what the different types of roasts and processing methods are, and the history of the beverage. While I enjoyed it, we’ve received a lot of feedback that prompted us to re-examine the course. I was actually brought on to redesigned the entire course using the skills I learned as a history major and created something that people have found much more engaging—all it needed was someone with a passion for history to reframe it!”

It’s been another record-breaking year for the College’s Admissions Office. With acceptance letters dropped in the mail on Friday, March 18, they’ve sorted through more than 6,800 applications from 47 states and 107 countries.

“This applicant pool was filled with so many talented students. It was the most competitive admissions year in Gettysburg’s history,” said Dean of Admissions Gail Sweezey. “The Class of 2020 is an extraordinary group of students!”

Fanny Aburto Lara '20 shows her love for Gburg @ top of Citlaltépetl, the highest mountain in Mexico. #gburg2020 pic.twitter.com/4KiN4bNodX

— GettysburgAdmissions (@GburgAdmissions) January 25, 2016

Accepted students can share their reactions—and current students and alums can follow the excitement!—on social media with #gburg2020 (or by checking out the Storify below…).

Accepted students can also join the Class of 2020 Facebook group in order to connect with their future classmates and stay up-to-date with the latest conversations.

Proud to say I have committed to continue my basketball career and further my education at Gettysburg College for the next four years!¿¿

— Nick Lord (@NickLord23) February 1, 2016

Other important updates—including information on everything from First-Year Orientation and First-Year Seminars to dining and housing—can be found on the accepted students website.

Enrolled and accepted students and their families are invited to campus Saturday, April 16 for Get Acquainted Day, an annual springtime celebration that offers opportunities to talk to current students, interact with professors from all of the academic departments, tour the campus community, eat at the Dining Hall, and more.

As accepted students prepare to visit campus, they are also encouraged to explore the Gettysburg dictionary, learn more about the College’s traditions, and check out the campus photo gallery.

For an entire day, Jennifer Arnold Brevoort ’00 (middle, above) and her cofounders at Pop-Up Play transformed Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia into a festival of pre-designed play for children. It was a kid-sized wonderland, with kids of all ages creating the games and activities they wanted to play. All Brevoort and her cofounders provided was the structure and resources that allowed them to play creatively.

The goal was to bring Pop-Up Play’s mission of facilitating natural learning and connection building through play to the children of Philadelphia in their largest event to date.

“We help kids discover what they are good at. Play is our vehicle because all people have an expertise in play—everyone can do it. In the process, we are creating opportunities for kids to share their expertise with their communities,” Brevoort said. “It is a powerful thing for kids to be able to build connections within their communities. They start to see ways to make change, and through our pre-designed play, realize they have the potential to make change now instead of waiting until they are older.”

Brevoort’s work with children started long before she founded Pop-Up play. In fact, she can trace the foundation of her current work to her years as a student at Gettysburg.

A Psychology major, Brevoort studied and worked with Prof. Steve Siviy, who’s primary research involves the play habits of rats. The two even published a paper on the subject, exploring the connection between play and stress in young rats.

“He is the first person I knew who made a career—a serious academic career—out of play,” Brevoort said. “I thought that was really inspiring and interesting to see something so important come out of something so simple.”

Play has been a central force in her life after graduation, first running experiential youth programs at Please Touch Museum. A few years later, she joined Foundation, Inc.’s Special Projects Initiatives in the Center for Afterschool Education where she traveled the country training Out of School Time educators how to create playful, youth-led project based learning spaces. It wasn't long after that she worked with the Philadelphia Youth Network and The Graduate! Network where she explored how to bring play into educators’ professional development.

It was her work at all levels of youth programming—and her cofounder’s work, too—that opened her eyes to the market for a program like Pop-Up Play.

“We could see patterns in what made youth programs work, and consequently, what made them fail,” Brevoort said. “We would talk a lot about these patterns and our own ideas, until one day we got tired of talking about it and decided to actually do something.”

What they did started small—a program that the three women could more easily fit into a schedule dominated by full time work and family life.

“The idea that we could do something we cared about outside of our jobs without it having to financially support us right away was instrumental in getting this started,” Brevoort said. “I never could have done this without the help and support of my cofounders. This project became a reality because we just started without waiting for enough funding.  We cared enough to try and we’ve made something special happen as a result.”

Since their early days, Pop-Up Play has turned into a fully-fledged company, offering events from single-day to week-long play in transformed public spaces to partnerships that bring blended coursework to educators and youth programs across the city. Beyond that, the company has even competed in a global non-profit contest, ultimately placing as a semi-finalist, all the while generating funds, raising awareness, and building partnerships that have propelled its mission beyond what any of its founders originally imagined.

The work has also had one positive—but unimagined—impact on Brevoort’s personal and professional life as well. It’s an example that Brevoort would encourage other budding entrepreneurs to pursue.

“Whether it’s consulting or volunteering or starting a business, you shouldn’t be afraid to build a diverse platform of professional experiences,” she said. “I never could have predicted how I would build a career around play as a college student, but because I followed something I cared about and capitalized on the many different opportunities that came my way, my work life is all the richer for it.”

Plank is going global, but we need your help. This $18 million dollar project is critical to our ability to prepare our students for an increasingly interconnected global world. Watch the video above or scroll below to find out the basics and share with your friends via #Gettysburgreat.

1. Our renovation of Plank will create a state-of-the-art global center right in the heart of our campus.

2. It will position Gettysburg College as a leader in global education for years to come.

3. That means saying goodbye to our old gym…

4. and hello to our new global hub!

5. Plank will provide our students with intentional collaborative spaces where both academic and co-curricular dialogue can thrive.

6. It will be a home for critical programs, like Globalization Studies and the Center for the Study of Global Issues.

7. The building will also house technology that seamlessly connects our students and faculty with the world like never before.

8. For the 60% of our students who study abroad, their transformational experiences don’t need to end when they get back to campus.

9. Plank will provide international resources that will influence their career trajectories and life choices.

10. Since not every student studies abroad, Plank will ensure all Gettysburgians transcend geographic borders and graduate with a rich global understanding.

11. Over the past five years, our number of international students has nearly tripled—and these new Gettysburgians are impacting campus in so many wonderful ways. Plank will take this integrated learning to another level!

12. It will provide a central location for all students—international and domestic alike—to share their cultures and traditions with the larger campus community.

13. For years, our historic building has served as a platform to send a message on campus. Now, let’s send a message out to the world.

14. Gettysburg College creates active and global leaders, who are ready to go out and make a difference in the world.

15. A Gettysburg education must be a global education!

16. Join us and help support one of the most visible and innovative projects in our College's history.

17. Together, we can make Gettysburg and great inseparable!

Learn more about Gettysburg Great: The Campaign for Our College. View additional photos from our students’ study abroad experiences.

As Jennifer Giannini ’18 lights a Bunsen burner, it’s hard not to think in metaphors. Before heading to the lab, the Biochemistry & Molecular Biology major shared that one course, Introduction to Phage Biology, was responsible for sparking her interest in research.

And—like the Bunsen burner coming to life—that spark lit quite the flame.

Giannini loved the phage biology course so much that she started inquiring about research opportunities.  A fellow student, Joe Robinson ’15, suggested she check out Assistant Professor of Biology Jennifer Powell’s lab, so she did. By the end of that year she not only had a year of research under her belt, but also the academic credentials to show for it.

“Her work was so good that it was even included in the paper my lab published this past summer,” said Powell, “so she was already a published author before even starting her sophomore year.”

Giannini’s research focused on learning more about how the conserved G protein-coupled receptor FSHR-1 is involved in the innate immune response in Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans, which is a small free-living, non-parasitic “worm” about 1 mm in size. All vertebrate animals, including humans, have two immune systems: the adaptive immune system and the innate immune system. C. elegans, invertebrate animals, only possess an innate immune system, making them good subjects for studying innate immunity.  The innate immune system is what can sense an infection and serves as a first line of defense. FSHR-1 is vital to that process, aiding in the expression of detoxifying genes and helping the worms discriminate between pathogenic and benign bacteria.

“I never thought I would publish a paper as an undergraduate let alone as a first-year,” Giannini said. “The phage course sparked my interest in research, but the moment I realized that this—science research—was a viable career was when I started doing research with Prof. Powell.”

The phage course and her research experiences were so impactful that Giannini signed up to serve as a peer learning associate for this year’s phage course taught by Prof. Nikki Shariat.

“When I took the class, I remember we had these clear vials of liquid. Around Thanksgiving we were able to look at them under the electron microscope, and it was fascinating to see that the clear liquid was actually the phage we had discovered and isolated,” Giannini said. “I wanted to make sure that other first-years were able to have an experience similar to mine.”

This summer Giannini will continue pursuing new and different research projects.  She’ll travel to the Bahamas as part of Biology Prof. István Urcuyo’s course, Tropical Marine Biology, and continue her research with Powell. Expanding on the work of the paper that was published last summer, Giannini will also present at a conference—actually the premier conference for geneticists and researchers who conduct research with C. elegans.

Beyond the summer, Giannini hopes to study marine biology in Australia the spring of her junior year. That’s one of the reasons why she decided to take Urcuyo’s course: “Although the marine biology course is not part of my major, I wanted to take the class because marine biology is a focus of the study abroad program in Australia,” Giannini said.

Though it’s not part of the major, her broad interest in the sciences is what attracted Giannini to a major in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. “I knew I loved chemistry but didn’t want to be a chemistry major. I loved both chemistry and biology and didn’t want to have to choose between the two,” she said. “It’s a challenging major but it was the right choice for me—I love it.”

__

Giannini’s sister, Julia, also attends Gettysburg as a Physics and Mathematics major. Their brother, John Giannini ’12, graduated from Gettysburg with a major in Physics and is pursuing a Ph.D. in biophysics at the University of Maryland College Park while working at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

For Peter Kratsios ’11, all it took was a promotion to know he had to quit his job.

It’s not that he didn’t like his work in digital media. Clearly, he was good at it, too. However, he had been thinking through a business idea that he wanted to pursue, and when he was offered the promotion, he quickly realized he couldn’t do both.

“I knew I would be doing an injustice to both if I tried to do both,” Kratsios said. “At the same time, I knew I could always go back to digital marketing if I wanted to. This opportunity wouldn’t always be available.”

So Kratsios quit his job, raised money, developed a prototype, gained feedback on the user experience, raised more money, hired a team of developers and designers, and nearly two years later, launched a product that he believes is revolutionizing the golf industry.

Kratsios isn’t the only one saying that, either. His company, GolfMatch, has been profiled and promoted by major publications and media outlets, from Sports Illustrated and Golf Digest Stix to MSNBC and FOX Business. Even professional golfers like Padraig Harrington have endorsed it.

The idea sounds simple enough. Kratsios created a mobile application that connects golfers both on and off the course based on age, skill level, and game preference. Its social booking system also allows users to purchase tee times at courses they can afford and at times that are convenient. Before Kratsios’s GolfMatch, nothing like this existed in the social golf space.

“Everyone has an idea these days,” Kratsios said. “I had this idea when I saw what was available in the golf space and realized there was a void that could be filled. What it comes down to is whether you are willing to take a risk, and whether you can find the right people to help execute your ideas.”

A Management major and Philosophy minor, Kratsios had been golfing most of his life. He was also a member of the golf team while at Gettysburg, and was named to the first team All-Centennial Conference during his first year. Outside of his classes and athletics, Kratsios was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon.

From the classroom, he says that it is the lessons he learned in philosophy that continue to serve him well today.

“Philosophy of Mind was definitely one of my favorite classes. You really learn how people think and understand why they do certain things in a particular way. It’s helped me immensely in what I do today.”

Particularly, he points to the need to relate to people, make connections, and build a network that will help one achieve their professional goals as integral skills for budding entrepreneurs.

“Connections are everything,” Kratsios said. “You have to surround yourself with people who can fill in the gaps in your experience or who know the people that you need to know. You will only ever be as successful as the people you surround yourself with.”

Just one example of when this mentality has served him well—last year’s Masters, the most prestigious tournament in golf. He was invited at the last minute to share a plane ride to the tournament with a GolfMatch investor. He didn’t have a ticket to the tournament or even a place to stay, but knew that the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Shortly after the plane landed, he made a few connections, found a place to stay, and even scored a free ticket to the tournament. By the end of the trip, he made connections with people who would become invaluable investors and partners for GolfMatch,

“I knew this was an opportunity that I couldn’t let pass me by,” Kratsios said. “When you surround yourself with the right people, you put yourself in a position where good things can happen. Once they do, you have to take advantage of them instead of taking the easy way out.”

Since launching GolfMatch, Kratsios has expanded its membership to all 50 states and Canada, and has noticed an impact in the golf industry as well.

“It’s a community driven product, and people have really rallied around it,” Kratsios said. “We are connecting people who share a common passion, and we are growing participation in golf.”

And about the promotion he turned down? The president of his previous company has become one of his top investors.

This morning on the TODAY show, Al Roker surprised Tyra Riedemonn with the news that she’s been accepted to Gettysburg College – her first choice school.

“This was the best way to receive this news,” Riedemonn said. “I feel like all of my hard work has paid off and I’m so glad to be coming to Gettysburg. I can’t wait to start!”

Riedemonn, a standout senior at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem, which is part of the Young Women’s Leadership Network and the CollegeBound Initiative network of schools, thought she was coming to the TODAY show plaza to talk about the CollegeBound Initiative (CBI).

The CBI, as Tyra explained, helps students in high-need public schools get into college by providing them with full-time college counselors. Gettysburg College was CBI’s first college partner.

Watch Al Roker surprise Tyra below.

Surprise! @YWLN1 high school senior Tyra just found out on air she was accepted to @gettysburg!

— USA TODAY College (@USATODAYcollege) March 30, 2016

#CBI fabulous morning @TODAYshow @YWLN1 TYWLS E Harlem student Tyra accepted to @gettysburg live on air! W @alroker pic.twitter.com/8nuFcztPqa

— YWLN (@YWLN1) March 30, 2016