Choosing Millersville
Women chose to come to Millersville for a variety of reasons, including cost, proximity, and the well regarded education program. All of the narrators who came to Millersville as students studied classroom teaching or school librarianship.
“I wanted to teach and it was the closest school and it was World War II and you didn’t do much traveling. So, I took the bus and there were quite a few other girls, and I say girls because there were very few boys left at school; not very many. We traveled on the bus to Millersville back and forth every day.”
Patricia Wilson Woerner, Class of 1945
“I was influenced by a teacher in my junior high school, Mrs. Anita Anderson…My mother wanted me to be a nurse, but that was not my calling…I chose to be a teacher…I applied to Millersville…It was interesting that the guidance counselor did not want me to go to Millersville. She told me she would get a scholarship for me to go to Cheyney, but not Millersville…I said, “I want to go to the best school that I can [and] get a job when I finish.”…And I went to Millersville and fell in love with the lake and the setting and I guess that [it] was far enough away from home. So I decided that that’s where I would go. And that’s how I got to go to Millersville.”
Yvonne Lambert Toney, Class of 1962
“I transferred to Millersville University in the spring of 2002. I chose MU for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it had the program I wanted and because it was only an hour from my parents and my weekend job back home. I was happy I made the choice I did because the History Department was extremely welcoming, so much so that I chose to remain at MU to earn my Masters degree in History. All in all, Millersville has been a wonderful fit for me.”
Meaghan Shirk, Class of 2004, current graduate student