Our department uses facilities both on and off campus to immerse students in a comprehensive education. These facilities provide you with an intensive, experiential and hands-on view of research.
Located in Boyer Hall near the faculty offices, the Resource Room holds journals and books for history students. It serves as a conference room for meetings of students and faculty, and provides comfortable chairs and tables for student research and study.
Boyer Hall is a 98,000-square-foot academic facility which contains 25 state-of-the-art classrooms, three computer labs, and a language lab. Parmer Cinema, a full-scale movie theatre seating 129 people, highlights this building. In addition, Boyer Hall houses part of the University's School of Arts, Culture and Society and The Boyer Center. Boyer Hall and The Boyer Center are dedicated to one of Messiah's most influential alumni and scholars, Ernie Boyer.
The newly refurbished Beatrice Howe Humanities Lab in Boyer 138 is outfitted with 20 computers and a flexible furniture arrangement. It provides a creative space for teaching and learning, and a meeting place for the work of the Digital Harrisburg working group and the Public Humanities Fellows Program. History students have used the facility to create GIS maps of 19th and 20th century Harrisburg, process oral history recordings and build websites.
The Oakes Museum is a museum on campus which features Smithsonian quality African and North American mammals. It houses a substantial collection of artifacts unearthed through local excavations in York and Cumberland County, and Native American artifacts from Pennsylvania.
About 10 miles south of Messiah University, this 18th to 20th century historical farm has been a valuable archaeological laboratory for our history students. We have carried out several years of research on the history of the property, including excavations, ground-penetrating radar survey and documentary research.
A mile from the Stouffer farm is a small historic cemetery containing the original members of the small Bermudian Brethren Community who migrated to the area from Ephrata in the late 18th century. Over time, the cemetery has fallen into disrepair and been partially destroyed through cultivation, neglect and destructive ground hogs. Our history students have been working for the last few years to document and restore it.
Established in 1951, these campus archives hold valuable artifacts and resources documenting the history of the Brethren in Christ denomination as well as the early history of Messiah.