Centers, Institutes & Initiatives
Centers and Institutes at F&M
Franklin & Marshall’s students, faculty and professional staff are dedicated to affecting positive, lasting change on campus, in Lancaster, and in the world. To that end, we have created dedicated spaces for those changemakers to gather, develop ideas, and build community around shared goals. Explore those places and discover how they add value to the academic and social experiences of our students.
The Alice Drum Women’s Center was established in 1992 to promote dialogue and action
around women’s issues and to instill an ethos of equality and inclusion. Today, the
center continues to strive toward inclusion and advocacy along the intersections of
race, class, sexuality, gender, and disability. The Center for Opinion Research is a full-scale survey research organization based
at F&M. With research capabilities enhanced by its relationship with F&M, the center
designs innovative and thoughtful research solutions to help organizations answer
important questions and make strategic decisions. Located within Franklin & Marshall College, the Center for Politics and Public Affairs
(CPPA) fosters the practice of democracy through the study of politics and public
policy.Alice Drum Women’s Center
Center for Opinion Research
Center for Politics and Public Affairs
Center for Sustainable Environment
F&M’s Center for the Sustainable Environment (CSE) unites the campus community’s many interests and initiatives relating to global environmental stewardship and sustainability. The Center coordinates efforts to enrich the F&M academic experience through environmental stewardship and sustainability.
Chesapeake Watershed Initiative (CWI)
Funded by grants from the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the Steinman Foundation, the Chesapeake Watershed Initiative (CWI) bridges social and natural sciences by studying the legacy of human impacts on floodplains within the Chesapeake Watershed and applies its findings through targeted action focused in Lancaster County, PA. The CWI aims to understand the effects of colonial settlement, dam construction, dam removal, and restoration through a three-fold approach of research, education, and action.
College Advising Corps in Pennsylvania
The College Advising Corps in Pennsylvania aims to increase the number of low-income, first-generation college, and underrepresented high school students who enter and complete higher education.
The Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers comprises the F&M Global Barometer of Gay
Rights (GBGR (R)), the Global Barometer of Transgender Rights (GBTR (TM)) and the
F&M Global Barometers LGBTQI+ Perception Index (GBPI). Together, these barometers
provide groundbreaking research on the state of LGBT+ human rights in 204 countries
and territories. Founded in 2010 by government professor, Dr. Susan Dicklitch-Nelson,
the barometers generate annual report cards detailing the state-and societal-level
protection or persecution of LGBT+ minorities worldwide. The heart of F&M’s global community is the Joseph International Center, a campus space
dedicated to bringing all members of the F&M community together across borders, cultures
and languages. Since opening in 2008, F&M’s Klehr Center for Jewish Life, home to F&M Hillel, has
been committed to enriching the lives of Jewish F&M students so that they may in turn
enrich Jewish people around the world.The Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers
Joseph International Center
The Klehr Center for Jewish Life
Lombardo Welcome Center
The Samuel N. and Dena M. Lombardo Welcome Center is F&M’s welcoming front door to prospective students, families, alumni and friends visiting our campus.
Philadelphia Alumni Writers House
Unique among selective liberal arts colleges, F&M’s Writers House is an actual house — complete with comfy couches, a kitchen, and a picturesque fireplace — with a mission to give the writing and reading community exciting opportunities to fully immerse themselves in wordcraft and literature.
Phillips Museum of Art
Located within F&M’s Steinman College Center, the Phillips Museum of Art fosters an understanding and appreciation of the arts, including contemporary, historical, and multicultural materials. The museum often partners with academic departments to offer opportunities for faculty and staff to extend the walls of their classrooms and engage students in tours, object-based learning workshops, and research opportunities that draw from the museum’s permanent collection, changing exhibitions, and visiting artists.
Ware Institute for Civic Engagement
F&M’s Ware Institute for Civic Engagement connects F&M students with opportunities to learn, serve, and work in the surrounding Lancaster community. By working directly with local leaders to address community challenges, students develop a deeper understanding of societal issues and make a positive impact on Lancaster while also gaining important professional skills.
Initiatives
Franklin & Marshall is innovative and entrepreneurial. Our ethos is to identify challenges, seek out opportunities, and solve problems. Our community has created several initiatives in recent years to pool our collective intellect and experience to demonstrably improve our campus, our home city, and our world.
Certificates are supplemental educational pathways you can pursue at F&M. Certificates
are not tied to your major or minor, but rather are credentials you can add to your
resume to demonstrate a specialized level of training and education in a particular
area of interest. There are several certificates available at F&M, each one an incubator
of innovation exploring a new field of study that blends perspectives from multiple
disciplines. In the spirit of living up to Benjamin Franklin’s legacy of creating solutions in
the service of the public good, Entrepreneurship at F&M is a program that offers exciting
courses and programs for entrepreneurial students. Reckoning with Lancaster is a humanities-based project supported by a Humanities for
All Times grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This project leverages the humanities
to explore and address Lancaster’s history, present and future.F&M Certificate Program
Entrepreneurship at F&M
Reckoning with Lancaster