Below are the positioning statements for Gettysburg College’s brand messaging. When our voice is consistent across marketing materials, our impact is amplified.
Purpose
Why we exist
Gettysburg College strives to graduate effective leaders and socially responsible citizens who will rise to the “unfinished work” of their time.
Read full mission statement.
Promise
How we achieve our purpose
At Gettysburg College, we promise every student A Consequential Education—one that gives them greater insight into who they are, what they want to accomplish, and how they will define and lead their own consequential life.
Read full articulation.
Signature
The essence of our purpose
Do Great Work
Messaging hierarchy
How our brand elements come together
A Consequential Education
A Consequential Education is our brand promise. All of our content showcases how Gettysburg’s consequential education enriches the mind, deepens the heart, and strengthens the capacity to act. You can read more about A Consequential Education here.
Some key questions to consider:
- How is each member of our community pursuing a life of consequence?
- How are they rising to the “unfinished work” of their time, as President Lincoln called us to do through his immortal Gettysburg Address?
Consequential means the effects of action, or the results that make a lasting impact. This GETTYSBURG College Magazine feature helps define A Consequential Education in action with examples.
Key messages
What to weave into content and conversations, as appropriate
| Our People + Our Place + Our Approach = A Consequential Education |
Our people
Our people are inspired by a drive to Do Great Work: consequential work. We want to solve big problems and make a lasting impact. Individually and collectively, our community sees opportunities to create a better world and acts upon it. Here, Gettysburg students develop lifelong connections, with access to the Gettysburg Network—more than 32,000 Gettysburgians who stand ready and willing to help them navigate every stage of their lives and careers.
- Partnership: A partnership in teaching, advising, and mentoring. From Day 1, our faculty treat their students as contributing colleagues.
- Belief: Our faculty’s belief in our students to Do Great Work, in turn inspires that great work.
- Gettysburg Network: Our students belong to a global network of 32,000 alumni who are motivated to help them build a dynamic and fulfilling career.
Our place
There is not a more inspiring or significant place to be during one’s formative years than Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Our students and faculty live and work every day in the echo of Lincoln’s enduring words. We dedicate ourselves to the “unfinished work” that Lincoln charged us to complete, and we leverage our proximity to major cities of influence, such as our nation’s capital, to advance the new work of our time.
- Inspiring location: Today’s students want to change the world. We invite them to study in a place that changed it.
- Cities of influence: Our students leverage our proximity to major cities of influence—like Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and our state capital of Harrisburg—to get involved and inspire positive change.
- Orientation toward the unfinished work: Our students live and learn in the echo of President Lincoln’s enduring Address—and they dedicate themselves to the “unfinished work” that Lincoln himself called us to advance.
Our 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. Here, our approach to teaching and learning—the Gettysburg Approach—ensures students gain a breadth and depth of knowledge and set of enduring skills, reinforced through our Guided Pathways and Personal Advising Teams.
While Gettysburg College’s people and place remain constant over time, our approach to evolves to respond to the needs of the times. Today, Gettysburg College is committed to responding to the Preparedness Gap, where only half of employers view today’s college graduates as career-ready, possessing the necessary skills to succeed in the working world.
The Gettysburg Approach
The Gettysburg Approach is A Consequential Education in practice. It is how we deliver on our brand promise. You can read more about the Gettysburg Approach here.
Some key questions to consider:
- How can we focus on the ends (student outcomes) vs. the means (programs) in our storytelling?
- What knowledge and enduring skills did students deepen during their time here?
Weave in knowledge and specific enduring skills into your content and conversations as appropriate, showcasing career readiness in response to the Preparedness Gap.
Key messages
What to weave into content and conversations, as appropriate
| Knowledge & Enduring Skills | |
| Gettysburg Approach = | reinforced by |
| Guided Pathways & Personal Advising Teams |
Knowledge
The first anchor of the Gettysburg Approach is to provide students with a breadth and depth of knowledge through a rigorous and contemporary education in the liberal arts and sciences.
Enduring skills
The second anchor of the Gettysburg Approach is a focus on developing and deepening the enduring skills that are most valued by employers and graduate schools:
- Adaptability
- Communication
- Creativity
- Intercultural Fluency
- Leadership
- Problem Solving
- Teamwork
Guided Pathways
Knowledge and enduring skills at Gettysburg College are practiced and deepened within our Guided Pathways. Eligible students can opt in and select one of four Pathways:
- Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation
- Global Citizenship and Intercultural Fluency
- Justice and Community Change
- Leadership, Teamwork, and Collaboration
Every Pathway intersects with a four-year Career Development Pathway to ensure students are connecting their activities to their career goals in an intentional way. Each student will graduate having participated in at least one Career-Ready Experience: an internship, long-term service project, study abroad experience, campus leadership role, or student-faculty research opportunity.
Personal Advising Teams
To ensure our students are getting the very most out of their Gettysburg education, they are supported by their own Personal Advising Team consisting of:
- Faculty Advisor
- Co-Curricular Advisor
- Career Advisor
- Alumni Mentor (*Following a student’s sophomore year)
Brand messaging checklist
Ask yourself these questions when creating content or having conversations about our College:
- Did you make Gettysburg College a character in your story or conversation?
- Did you weave together anecdotes with facts?
- What part(s) of the Consequential Education formula (Our People + Our Place + Our Approach = A Consequential Education) did you highlight?
- How did you elevate the ends (enduring skills) over the means (programs)?
- How did you elevate our return on investment (ROI) by underscoring enduring skills as a response to employer needs?