Exhibit: The Impact of WWI @ Ship

Archives & Special Collections' new exhibit, The Impact of World War I on Shippensburg Campus, is now on display on the upper level of Ezra Lehman Memorial Library. We encourage you to check out the exhibit in the display cases at the top of the stairs the next time you visit the library!

Sheila Joy, Archives & Special Collections Graduate Assistant, curated the exhibit. Below, in a special library blog guest appearance, Sheila describes her experience researching and designing the exhibit. Archives & Special Collections thanks Sheila for her hard work! The exhibit will be on display through the Spring 2015 semester.

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The United States' entrance into World War I in 1917 affected colleges and universities in many different ways. Commemoration of the war's centennial is currently underway across the country. Archives & Special Collections has just unveiled a new exhibit that examines the impact of the war on Shippensburg University (then Cumberland Valley State Normal School) and its students.

Early research of secondary sources offered a general atmosphere of the campus upon entrance into WWI: food conservation, a Red Cross chapter, changes in curriculum, and enrollment issues. Further research in the archives led me to excellent primary sources that revealed more intimate details: letters written by soldiers and President Ezra Lehman, newspaper clippings, photographs, and program documents.

From these materials I was able to interpret the impact of the war on different levels. President Lehman created effective recruitment strategies that kept enrollment up despite the loss of students. Letters from former students and newspaper clippings allowed soldiers' voices to tell their personal story and how it contributed to the overall picture of war in America. Photographs, yearbooks, and program documents revealed how students still enrolled at CVSNS maintained their day-to-day lives despite living amidst world war.

My goal with this exhibit was to provide a glance into how life operated for students at Shippensburg during America's involvement in WWI. Some young men enlisted and became soldiers, while other young men and women helped out through the Red Cross or left school to work for the war effort. Student activities such as the Halloween dance and Thanksgiving play went on as scheduled. I hope that my interpretation of the research I have gathered illustrates what life would have been like on campus nearly a century ago.

~Sheila Joy, Archives & Special Collections Graduate Assistant