A three-year, $3.2 million gift from Ken Mehlman ’88, Vice Chair of the F&M Board of Trustees, will establish the Mehlman Leadership and Performance Institute at Franklin & Marshall College. The Institute will be anchored by a new cohort-based fellowship program designed to develop the next generation of leaders, entrepreneurs, and engaged citizens through real-world externships and experiential learning. 

This fall, 64 members of the Class of 2030 will arrive on campus in one of four cohorts as the first Leadership Fellows. Each cohort will live and learn together, supported by four-year, $15,000 merit scholarships and deep faculty mentorship, alongside practical, hands-on experiences that extend beyond the classroom and into Lancaster.

The Institute will be a place for students to participate in hands-on learning through externships relevant to their area of study. It will also serve as a hub that brings to F&M experts in growth mindset, resilience, grit, recovery from setbacks and performance science. These resources will be available for students, faculty, coaches, staff, alumni, and Lancaster community partners. It will help all interested students improve performance while on campus and provide a space to put into practice risk-taking, resilience, and recovery from setbacks that will prepare them to lead in whatever field they choose to pursue. 

“The world our students will inherit is moving faster than ever before, and the Mehlman Institute will ensure that our students are prepared to thrive. It combines hands-on learning and close faculty mentorship with everything it takes to achieve positive change in our communities,” said President Andrew Rich. “Ken appreciates the power that comes from developing grit and a growth mindset in our students, and the Mehlman Institute will do that in an unparalleled cohort-based model that allows students to test ideas, persevere through challenges, engage meaningfully with the Lancaster community, and learn to lead. My deep thanks to Ken for his generosity, vision, and leadership at F&M.”

Board of Trustees Vice Chair Ken Mehlman '88 in Washington, D.C. 

Learning by Doing, Perfecting by Repeating

This follows Mehlman’s $500,000 donation last summer to support a planning year for what will now be the Mehlman Leadership and Performance Institute. That planning led to the development of four pilot cohorts of leadership fellows, who will begin in Fall 2026. 

The program will support more first-year students with four-year merit scholarships to enter into faculty-led cohort-based experiences, which will include coaching from alumni, learning from thought leaders, and opportunities to support and start business and social entrepreneurship ventures. The Institute will also have opportunities for F&M juniors to participate in cohort-based programs tied to deep mentorship and community engagement. 

But the fellowship isn't just about acquiring experience; it's about learning to improve. Fellows will assess where they can grow academically and professionally, identify what's holding them back, and work with mentors, faculty, and peers to measure and compound their gains over time. Growth mindset and the discipline of learning from failure are central to the model.

“The Mehlman Institute is a means of translating knowledge to action, to actual performance. It embodies, lifts up, and clarifies what we've already been doing as an institution, and it takes it to the next level,” said Provost Sunita Kramer ’92. 

Mehlman is a firm believer in the F&M educational model that emphasizes learning inside and outside of the classroom.

“You learn best by doing. The more reps — ideally hard challenges where you struggle — offer feedback that, if you can embrace, adapt, and adjust, allow you to compound gains,” said Mehlman. “F&M has a long tradition of engaged and experiential learning. We want to double down on that and build in grit and resiliency. Taken together, this can equip Diplomats for an incredibly competitive and rapidly evolving world. Through the Institute, they’ll get real-world business and government experience, practice resiliency, and develop a growth mindset — and do hard things, not just read about them. We also believe this expertise can help all of our students, our athletes, and our community members.”

A growth mindset, and the power of compounding hard-won gains, is a differentiator for Mehlman — and a significant area of focus for the Institute. Fellows will be tasked with assessing where they can improve both academically and professionally and consider what factors, behaviors, and circumstances might be holding them back. Fellows will then work to improve, measure, and compound those improvements, and set high goals for further growth, including through support from mentors, faculty, and peers to achieve their full potential.

Acknowledgment that failure is often a useful learning experience resonates with Joaquin Villarreal, director of entrepreneurship at F&M and one of the people involved in the planning for the new Institute. Villarreal points out one of the strongest connections between a tested leader and a successful entrepreneur comes down to how they approach friction.

“We should look at obstacles as information, and even fuel, to help us succeed. Looking at obstacles as opportunities rather than impediments challenges you to figure out what to do with them and ask what you need to tweak or iterate to progress toward your goal,” said Villarreal. “That may take you somewhere unexpected, but it will absolutely take you forward. That's new information and motion you can translate into growth, something entrepreneurs do all the time, since there's usually a lot more information in failure than in success.”

Learning with, and from, Lancaster

Mehlman sees Franklin & Marshall’s location as one of its greatest assets. With its unique blend of urban and rural, he points out that the Lancaster area, like F&M, has a reputation for bringing individuals of different backgrounds together to solve problems. The size of each provides students with the ability to participate, engage, and make a difference — and yet still have access to the resources, structure, and capacity for entrepreneurship and social initiatives.

“Lancaster provides an environment, the real-world case scenarios, for our students to work on, and with our neighbors,” said Villarreal. “Through the Institute, we're opening up the pathways to allow students to run towards these opportunities and challenges in a way that will set them apart from their peers at other colleges and universities.”
Kramer agreed, noting that the connections are — and should be — meaningful, bidirectional, and impactful for all involved. Franklin & Marshall and Lancaster are inexorably linked, and each provides real benefits and advantages that are mutually reinforcing.

"If you think about areas where the biggest progress has been made, it has always involved people from different sides coming together."

Ken Mehlman '88

Kramer recently joined President Rich and F&M’s Vice President for Student Affairs to facilitate a workshop for faculty and staff designed to explore and recommit to the College’s tradition of civic and community engagement. The event, which connected approximately 100 F&M faculty and staff, demonstrated the energy around this type of engagement at F&M, which recently signed onto the Citizens & Scholars Campuswide Immersion program. 

“In this work, it’s important for us to show Lancaster that we understand that we're allies,” she said. “There are opportunities and challenges that our students and faculty can contribute to or help solve, but there’s also an acknowledgement that there’s a lot Lancaster can teach us, too. We’re in this together.”

Expanding Perspective, Opportunity in Difference

At Franklin & Marshall, students don’t declare a major until their sophomore year. That means each incoming Leadership Fellow will arrive on campus as part of a cohort that spans multiple academic interests. 

“Historically, if you think about areas where the biggest progress has been made, it has always involved people from different sides coming together,” said Mehlman. “If you want to change the world, you’ll find that the people you don't agree with are your best friends. If you want to change the world, you need to understand, and you need to listen, learn from, and respect the people who disagree with you.”

It’s a theme that’s already playing out on campus as faculty begin preparing for the arrival of the first cohorts of Leadership Fellows this fall. Kramer noted that those involved in cohort planning are approaching interdisciplinary work with a renewed excitement.

“When you put people together to work on a common project, interdisciplinarity happens as a byproduct, in addition to a defined goal. These cohorts are bringing together our faculty, and will pull in experts across different fields, to create amazing experiences for students in partnership with our communities. Already, we’re seeing that faculty are finding that across disciplines, they have common themes and threads, and it's actually building a stronger community, even before the arrival of our students this fall.”

The explicit focus on leadership, entrepreneurship, creativity, and civic engagement that students will experience within and across the curriculum will be augmented at the Mehlman Institute by F&M alumni and outside experts who will share their own experiences and advice with the Fellows through frequent mentoring opportunities. The Fellows will then work with faculty mentors to facilitate sharing of these resources across campus, ensuring that even students unaffiliated with the cohort program can benefit from a broader perspective that complements their classroom experience.

The first Leadership Fellows cohorts will arrive on campus this fall with the F&M Class of 2030.