Civic-minded

Over the past decade, Emily Schoenberger ’15 has held numerous positions at Mercersburg, as a student and faculty member. Most recently, she has been named Mercersburg’s first Director of Civic Engagement and head of the history department.

Schoenberger is a native of Mercersburg who attended the Academy. “I think because I grew up here…[there’s] that commitment that helps me avoid getting cynical when things get really hard,” said Schoenberger. “But because this is a place where I have chosen to make my life, I’m very invested in making sure it’s the best possible place it can be, and so that is what guides me.”

Of her new responsibilities, Schoenberger said, “It’s daunting because these are two big roles, and the civics role in particular is relatively new. The parameters aren’t entirely defined. I’m a person who likes a lot of organization and direction and accomplishing–a checklist–but it’s exciting because that means there’s a lot of possibility and a lot of potential.” Schoenberger added, “With these new positions, I feel like my role has grown in the sense that now I'm not just controlling what happens in my classroom, but also what happens outside my classroom to a certain extent. I feel like I'm taking on an expanded role in that way.”

Schoenberger studied civic engagement and education in her master’s program at Penn State, and wants to use her experience to make a positive impact on students. “I want every student to graduate from here having the tools, skills, and dispositions to participate as a responsible citizen in a democracy,” said Schoenberger. 

“It can be really easy, especially in today’s day and age, to just kind of get cynical and down on politics and society and the state of democracy,” said Schoenberger. “My hope is that we’re actively counteracting that at Mercersburg through our civic programming. Continuing our programming outside of academics and integrating civics into our academic curriculum are the two big mandates that I have this year.” 

As an educator, she emphasizes the importance of discussion. “So much of civics is having conversations and difficult conversations, and so if we can be doing that in the department as often as possible, I think that that aligns with both what we want to teach students to do as historians and what we want them to do as citizens,” explained Schoenberger.  

A fair degree of overlap exists between Schoenberger’s work in civic engagement and in leading the history department. “A lot of the skills that we want to teach students as citizens align with the skills that we want to teach in the history department, like discussion, evidence-based argumentation, and standing up for what you believe in,” said Schoenberger.

Her appointment to the positions was intentional. “Civics is not only existing in the history department,” said Schoenberger. “Civics applies to literally every subject and everything that you do in life, as a human, but it definitely has a lot of natural alignment with the history department, history, and social studies.”