A Small College with Big Resources

The challenge for a college like Franklin & Marshall is to stay true to the enduring values of the liberal arts, while responding to the need to equip students for life and work in the 21st century.

Our claim sounds like an impossible paradox: How do we maintain that a liberal arts education is not vocational training, yet say it is the very best training for a contemporary life of fulfilling work guided by examined values and thoughtfully made choices?

At Franklin & Marshall College, we don't just study the liberal arts. We put them into practice.

The many centers and institutes at Franklin & Marshall College, along with our academic programs provide exciting new opportunities to "do" the liberal arts:

• The Center for Liberal Arts and Society
• The Clinic for Special Children
• The Carolyn and Robert Wohlsen '50 Center for the Sustainable Environment
• The Floyd Institute's Center for Opinion Research (home of the nationally recognized Franklin & Marshall College Poll)
• The Floyd Institute's Center for Politics and Public Affairs
• The Joseph International Center
• The Klehr Center for Jewish Life
• The Local Economy Center
• The Millport Conservancy
• The Philadelphia Alumni Writers House
• The Phillips Museum of Art
• The Sudan Institute for Research and Policy (SIRP) 
• The Ware Institute for Civic Engagement

Only a handful of liberal arts colleges have writers houses; an international house and a center for Jewish life are unusual outside a university and large city; a national poll is rare at a small college. We are a small college with big resources.