Currently: 65°F
Millersville student Isabel Carmichael has been volunteering for Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute Summer Conference since sixth grade, alongside her sister. Held for more than 40 years, the Summer Conference brings leading historians and public audiences together for lectures, battlefield tours, small group conversations and roundtable conversations about the Civil War.
“When I volunteer, I help sell the merchandise, help staff the busses on tours, answer any questions, get speakers set up – making sure they have water and their book is out on display – for when they are speaking,” she says. “I pretty much do whatever is needed to help the conference run smoothly!”
A Gettysburg resident, Carmichael is very familiar with the Gettysburg National Military Park, the site of the Summer Conference. She has spent lots of time there, much of it with her late father, Dr. Peter Carmichael, who was director of the Civil War Institute until his death in July 2024. This year’s Summer Conference, held in June, honored the life and scholarship of Dr. Carmichael.
Isabel credits her father for her desire to be a teacher. “My dad was a professor at Gettysburg College, and I saw the way he interacted with his students and got to know them,” she says. “A student of my dad’s ended up living with us for a couple of months since he was having a really difficult time. My dad doing that really showed me the impact teachers/professor can have on their students.”
Isabel came to Millersville “because I loved the campus and one of my teachers from elementary school went there, too,” she explains. “I like how it was a smaller public school. The biggest point for me was the study abroad program that I can do as an education major.”
