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.

Alice Drum Women’s Center

F&M’s 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.

Center for Opinion Research

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.

Center for Politics and Public Affairs

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.

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.

Center for Sustained Engagement with Lancaster

F&M’s Center for Sustained Engagement with Lancaster (CSEwL) is a hub for generating rich and meaningful collaboration between F&M and its vibrant home county of Lancaster. By closely collaborating with faculty, the center distinctly integrates F&M’s liberal arts education with community development to support new avenues of inquiry, initiatives, and research collaborations between F&M and the city and county.

The Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers

The Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers comprises the F&M Global Barometer of Gay Rights (GBGR®) and the Global Barometer of Transgender Rights (GBTR™). GBGR® and GBTR™ conduct groundbreaking research in the study of human rights, specifically focusing on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). The barometers provide a global measure of LGBTI human rights in 204 countries and regions, generating annual report cards detailing the state- and societal-level protection or persecution of SOGI minorities worldwide.

Joseph International Center

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.

The Klehr Center for Jewish Life

Since opening in 2008, F&M’s Klehr Center for Jewish Life has been committed to enriching the lives of Jewish F&M students so that they may in turn enrich Jewish people around the world.

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

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 — including art history — 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.

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Ware Institute for Civic Engagement

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. 

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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.

F&M Certificate Program

Certificates are supplemental educational pathways you can pursue at F&M. Certificates are not tied to your major or minor, but are credentials you can add to your resume to demonstrate a specialized level of training and education in a particular area. There are several certificates available at F&M, each one an incubator of innovation exploring a new field of study that uniquely blends perspectives from multiple disciplines.

Entrepreneurship at F&M

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.

Sustainability

We’re committed to serving as a leader in building a sustainable world. We pride ourselves on looking at every possible angle to create a more sustainable future for both the campus and the world. Explore how we tap into current advances in sustainable ideas and technology to tangibly improve our campus and community.