In just two weeks, students attending Franklin & Marshall College will be back on campus for the fall semester. F&M President Dr. Barbara Altman says the start of a new academic year is the highlight of her year.

 “We're expecting a first-year class of about 500, which is pretty much what we planned. I know we might want to talk about the various things going on in higher ed these days, but we're delighted with a very, very talented class of 500”.

In addition to serving as President, Dr. Altman is the Board Chair of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (AICUP) of Pennsylvania. AICUP is the only statewide organization that serves exclusively the interests of independent, nonprofit higher education within the Commonwealth and exists to complement and support the work of campus leaders. She also recently led the largest fundraising program in the college’s history.

“We closed that campaign about two years ago and we came in over about 10% over goal. It takes a long time to do a capital campaign like that. Among our most important priorities was raising money to support financial aid for students. We give very generous aid, and we commit to fully meeting a student's aid for all four years there with us. So that's a big part of our budget”.

Dr. Altman has been at F&M since August 2018. She says the location in Lancaster, and the reputation of the college is what led her to Franklin & Marshall.

“Being in Lancaster is an unbelievable privilege and advantage for Franklin and Marshall. Many schools like us are located in quite isolated places, but we have this wonderful, vibrant, busy, exciting city to work in and we're an open campus, so our our boundaries just meld right into the neighborhoods around us. Our students volunteer, work for paid, do internships, right in Lancaster City and Lancaster County. We love to bring the community to our facilities, as they just came for the Lancaster International Piano Festival, which was held in our beautiful little jewel of a concert hall. The bars are a concert hall, and we're just so lucky to be in the fabric, right in the fabric of a really happening little city. That is a great place for our students to live and work. I'm happy to say that we have about 1400 Franklin and Marshall grads working in the immediate area. It's our third largest alumni group, actually.”