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Gilbert Hall was built as the second model school for the Cumberland Valley State Normal School in 1911. The building replaced the original Model School on the first floor of Old Main. Gilbert Hall housed the lab school until the early 1940s when a new lab school opened - the Rowland School.

Gilbert Hall.

Gilbert Hall.

Afro-American Organization group photograph in the 1971 Cumberland Yearbook.

Afro-American Organization group photograph in the 1971 Cumberland Yearbook.

When the lab school left, this building then became the home to the Business Department. Shippensburg State Teachers College developed a business education curriculum that was approved on December 3, 1937. It was originally focused on training teachers to teach business in public schools—but it also the roots of our modern Grove College of Business.

In the 1970s, Gilbert Hall became the historical home of Shippensburg's Afro-American Student Organization, the group that is now Shippensburg’s Multicultural Student Association. Diane Jefferson became the president of the Organization during the ‘70s and has been the direct of the the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs since its creation in 1989.