The Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government, which began operations in August 1994, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, semi-autonomous unit of Lafayette College. Robert B. Meyner was a graduate of Lafayette College (1930) and Governor of New Jersey from 1954 to 1962. Helen S. Meyner served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 to 1969. The Meyner Center is supported by an endowment contributed by the estate of Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner, contributions from Richard and Priscilla Hunt of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and other Meyner family and friends, and external awards and contracts from specific projects by private foundations, nonprofit entities, and government agencies. The Center educates students about the vital importance of state and local governments and encourages young people to participate in state and local affairs as volunteers, interns, and future leaders.

The Center also works with state and local government officials and civic groups in its Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York region to enhance public awareness, effective governance, regional cooperation, and public policy. For local governments in the region, the Center provides such specific services as administrative and financial reviews, comparative salary studies, executive-search assistance, strategic planning/visioning programs, and educational workshops and forums. The Meyner Center works, as well, with national associations of state and local officials, such as the Council of State Governments, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Governors Association, National League of Cities, Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs, and Multistate Tax Commission.

Internationally, the Center engages in educational and training programs on regional and local governance, federalism and decentralization, and intergovernmental relations at the request of foreign governments and universities, the World Bank, and U.S. agencies. The Center has worked on issues of federalism, democracy, and local governance in, for example, Brazil, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Center also has hosted USIA/Fulbright and National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes as well as visiting scholars, public officials, and delegations from abroad. The Center also is a focal point for a long-term project entitled ?A Global Dialogue on Federalism in the 21st Century,? which is sponsored jointly by the Forum of Federations and the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies.