Centers, Institutes & Initiatives

Centers and Institutes at F&M

Franklin & Marshall’s students, faculty and professional staff are dedicated to effecting 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.

AdvisePA (Advise 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.

Alice Drum Women’s Center

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.

Center for Career and Professional Development

The Center for Career and Professional Development cultivates professional development experiences that embolden students and alumni to design and navigate fulfilling careers with courage and curiosity.

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 the 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.

The Franklin & Marshall Global Barometers

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.

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, 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.

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.

Mehlman Center for Strength, Conditioning, Wellness, and Performance

The Mehlman Center for Strength, Conditioning, Wellness, and Performance will be an innovative new facility that will be home to strength training, fitness and performance-centered growth for the entire F&M community.

Mehlman Leadership and Performance Institute

The Mehlman Leadership & Performance Institute develops the next generation of leaders, entrepreneurs, and engaged citizens through real-world externships and experiential learning.

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

Find opportunities to learn, serve, and work in the Lancaster Community through F&M’s Ware Institute for Civic Engagement. By working directly with local leaders to address community challenges, you’ll develop a deeper understanding of societal issues, make a positive impact on your community, and gain important interpersonal and 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.

AI @ F&M

F&M is committed to fostering human-centered AI innovation through its signature interdisciplinary approach that asks how these tools can be used ethically, responsibly, and sustainably in service to a more just and human future.

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.

F&M Certificate Program

Certificates are supplemental educational pathways you can pursue independent of your major or minor. There are several certificates available to full-time F&M students, each one an incubator of innovation exploring a new field of study that blends perspectives from multiple disciplines.

Franklin & Marshall Leadership Fellows

At F&M, we believe your college years are a launchpad for lifelong leadership. That’s why — through the Mehlman Leadership and Performance Institute — we created four distinctive fellowship programs for students who are curious, motivated, and eager to make a positive and immediate impact in the fields of climate and sustainability, creative writing, entrepreneurship, and public service.

Reckoning with Lancaster

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.