Department Spotlight

Meet Our New Faculty

The History Department occasionally showcases some of their faculty, staff, or teaching assistants. The department would like to recognize our newest faculty member:

Dr. Megan VanGorder

My name is Megan VanGorder and I’m so humbled and excited to be joining the incredible History faculty at ISU. I’ve considered myself a Redbird my entire life. I grew up in Normal, both of my parents are alumni and my dad worked in Institutional Research.

I graduated from the ISU History Ed program in 2010. I taught middle school at Olympia Middle School while beginning my graduate work in history. I completed my PhD at Northern Illinois and for the last three years, I’ve been teaching and leading the History Education program at Governors State University.

My current book project, A Mother’s Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War Era Nurse, explores medical authority in the Civil War era and how one woman navigated the shifting world of work and cultural conceptions of motherhood in the nineteenth century United States. As a historian and teacher educator, I strongly believe that the past is most powerful when it connects us to the places and people around us. My education related research considers how teaching U.S. history through localized source materials has the potential to increase civic engagement.

I live in Normal with my husband (David) and my three sons. I like sports (and I don’t care who knows!), millennial coded pop culture references, and I can almost always be found drinking coffee or Coke Zero.

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