Millersville University: Pennsylvania's First Normal School
Near Intercourse, Pennsylvania
The university whose campus spreads out here has been training Pennsylvania's teachers for nearly one hundred seventy years. It opened in eighteen fifty-five as the Lancaster County Normal School, a private institution focused entirely on preparing young people to stand in front of classrooms. Four years later, the state government designated it the first Pennsylvania State Normal School, recognizing it as the commonwealth's official model for teacher education.
Ownership shifted entirely to the state in nineteen seventeen. Millersville became a State Teachers College in nineteen twenty-seven, then broadened its curriculum to become a State College offering liberal arts and education in nineteen fifty-nine. The transformation continued: in nineteen eighty-three the institution joined the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education under its current name, Millersville University of Pennsylvania. A journey from a county training school to a comprehensive regional university, built on more than a century and a half of preparing the people who teach.
