President of the College — Franklin & Marshall

Welcome to Franklin & Marshall College

We are an academically rigorous liberal arts college named for two iconic Americans—inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall.

For 224 years, our students have learned by doing, working directly with deeply invested faculty on high-impact research and scholarship.

We recruit students who we believe can become intellectual leaders. They’re curious and hard-working. We teach them to connect ideas, write well, relate theory and practice, understand diversity, ask questions and then answer them.

Within a supportive community that values individuality and developing one’s own voice, our students discover how to unleash their talent and exceed their own expectations. At Franklin & Marshall College, we create the education we seek.

Meet President Dan Porterfield

From President Porterfield's Twitter Feed

Follow him @DanPorterfield

- DanPorterfield: Another close win for the #FandM women's basketball team, tremendous poise...
- Posted: 13 hours ago
- DanPorterfield: Another courageous teenager writes about his legal status and the need for the Dream Act, this time in the NYT... http://t.co/0oBe6G28
- Posted: 3 days ago
- DanPorterfield: Congrats to #fandm women's bball for a gut-check revenge win vs. Muhlenberg, Now 12-4 and 2nd in conf. http://t.co/P4LdFyhd
- Posted: 4 days ago
- DanPorterfield: Muhlenberg played well down the stretch to get the win. Sometimes we have to lose today to win tomorrow... #FandM Go Dips!
- Posted: 5 days ago
- DanPorterfield: Huge possession: #FandM down 1, 20 seconds left. We call time.
- Posted: 5 days ago

From the President's Blog

- F&M and Posse in Miami: Launching the Scientific Leaders of Tomorrow
- 1/9/12 3:10 PM
- This past weekend, I was privileged to travel to Miami, Florida to celebrate the selection of ten students who will study at Franklin & Marshall College in the so-called STEM [...]
- When Failure Is Not An Option
- 11/28/11 1:09 PM
- I was deeply moved by a talk I heard recently by F&M graduate Kwesi Koomson ’97. While pursuing his education, he reflected on the challenges students in rural areas of his native Ghana face in developing their potential. In some villages, no public school student had ever passed the government examination to attend high school. Kwesi decided that he would change that. Visiting Ghana after he graduated, however, he realized just how tough it would be to start a successful school from scratch. “This a bad idea,” Kwesi said to his wife, “but we're still going to do it.”
- Mentoring Makes All the Difference
- 11/2/11 12:17 PM
- Franklin & Marshall is treating November as a month of thanks—thanking the thousands of alumni, parents and friends who are loyal supporters of the College, as well as all our colleagues on campus who help F&M offer an extraordinary undergraduate education.
- Intellectual formation, skills for life, or both?
- 10/24/11 7:03 PM
- I enjoyed this excellent piece by Jeff Selingo with The Chronicle of Higher Education about the purposes of an undergraduate education for today’s youth. There are different types of colleges [...]
- 9/11 in 2011: Reflections
- 9/17/11 12:27 PM
- “9/11 isn’t just a day. It’s a lifetime. It’s not just history, it’s life.” So said Nicholas Clark ‘14 in a film that was part of the F&M Common Hour [...]