A Consequential Education
At Gettysburg College, you gain more than knowledge. You learn more about who you are, what matters to you, and how you can make a difference.
That is A Consequential Education.
Your education takes shape through the people you meet, the place you call home, and the experiences that connect your learning to the world. You work closely with faculty, learn alongside your peers, and put ideas into action.
The result is an education that enriches your mind, deepens your heart, and strengthens your capacity to act.
A consequential place rooted in history: There is not a more inspiring or significant place for a student to be during their formative college years than Gettysburg, Pa. Our students and faculty live and work every day in the echo of the “unfinished work” Lincoln spoke of during his ever-relevant Gettysburg Address—the work he charged us to complete. Furthermore, we leverage our proximity to major cities of influence, including Washington, D.C., to advance the new work of our time.
A community of consequential people: Gettysburg College attracts students and community members whose actions are inspired by a drive to Do Great Work—consequential work. Our community is innately curious and passionate about having an active part in change. There are no bystanders here. Surrounded by faculty who share the same ambitions, and united with their peers in this deep-rooted desire to create a better world, the Gettysburg Network that’s built on campus, extends across industries and around the world.
United in a consequential approach: A Gettysburg College education is a powerful integration of a modern liberal arts and sciences curriculum and real-world, co-curricular experiences that puts learning into practical application. Our students aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Whether it be conducting student-faculty research in a lab, digging for historical artifacts on campus, or exploring the inside of a cave, they’re all-in—making connections from the classroom to wherever their studies take them.
Our Promise
A Consequential Education enriches the mind, deepens the heart, and strengthens the capacity to act. It provides the essential tools for leading an enriched, contributive, and successful life—a consequential life. Such an education involves more than learning how the world works; it also provides the means by which a person is able to gain a greater insight into who they are, what they want to accomplish, and how they will define, and then lead, their own consequential life.
A consequential Gettysburg education maintains its relevance throughout the course of a graduate’s life and career. Beyond the high caliber academic work students do here, they graduate having refined specific personal skills that will be invaluable to them in effectively navigating our complex, challenging, and ever-changing world. Our consequential education helps students develop their intellectual dexterity, and gain a true understanding of what constitutes diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how it produces a richer human experience for all members of the community. It expands students' emotional intelligence, so important to being able to keep one’s balance, empathize, and communicate effectively with others, and contribute meaningfully to creating a more just world. Today’s Gettysburg College graduates are likely to hold many positions in multiple fields throughout the course of their dynamic careers; the human and intellectual capacities they deepen here will serve them well at every turn, in every pursuit.
A Gettysburg College education is consequential because of the nature of the relationships our students develop during their years here—in particular, the distinctive partnerships that form between students and their professors—partnerships characterized by both parties holding a strong belief in the integrity and the ability of the other. The confidence of the faculty in the ability of their students to Do Great Work, in turn inspires that great work.
A consequential Gettysburg education is grounded in the liberal arts and sciences, the study of which lays a strong foundation for a lifetime of learning and growing. It allows for the development of those skills of discernment necessary for being able to separate fact from opinion, recognize the better ideas amid the lesser ones, and choose the better path when there is a choice to be made.
Consequential educations are inspired by consequential places, and in 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, became one of the most consequential places in the world—consecrated by President Abraham Lincoln as the place where the struggle to ensure the survival of the young American nation reached its zenith. It was to us that he issued the challenge to “...be dedicated here to the unfinished work for which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” And so we are.
Those who come here, to this College, in this place, surrounded by history and opportunity, build in each other the ambition and the determination to take up the great and unfinished work of making a better world for themselves, their families, their communities, their nations.
Ready to Do Great Work?
