No matter how you say it, URI is big into languages. And big into mixing languages with other disciplines to strengthen your career outlook with global companies in the U.S. and around the world. Take Alyssa Kolton ’10, whose fluency in Hebrew helped land her a kinesiology internship with the Israeli National Soccer Team.
We’ve created innovative ways to dovetail our language degrees with other academic degrees in ways that make a lot of sense for your career future.
We have degree programs in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Classics, just like everybody else. But URI was the first in Rhode Island to offer a major in Mandarin Chinese, the only New England university with a Chinese Language Flagship program, and the only school in Rhode Island offering a Spanish master’s degree. If you’re looking for something out of the ordinary, you can also take classes in Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Modern Greek, Portuguese, and Russian. And then there are the dual degree programs.
Not only do we encourage double- and triple-majoring, we’ve also created innovative ways to dovetail our language degrees with other academic degrees in ways that make a lot of sense for your career future.
For example, Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design majors can also earn a degree in a “fashion” language – French or Italian – and study abroad at such schools as Mod’Spe, a Parisian fashion marketing and merchandising school, or Accademia Italiana, considered one of the best fashion and design schools in Italy. We’ve also blended French with pharmacy, in a one-of-a-kind, six-year program that gets you a Pharm.D. and a B.A. in French, two hospital rotations in France, and a big advantage in the marketplace.
Our German program is the country’s second-largest, thanks in part to our innovative and award-winning International Engineering Program, now a model for similar (but different) programs around the world. Earn two degrees in five years, and spend a full year abroad — half working in a paid engineering internship for such companies as BMW, Nokia Siemens, or Bayer, and half studying at a partner university in Germany, France, Canada, Latin America, Spain, or China. By breaking down language barriers to trade, research, and engineering, the program has a job placement rate of nearly 100%. But International Engineering isn’t limited to German. You can study engineering alongside French, Spanish, and Chinese too.
If engineering isn’t your thing, and business is, you can study French, Spanish, Chinese and German along business in our International Business Program, which is modeled on the engineering program. Designed specifically for global careers, International Business is a five-year, dual degree program focused on one of seven business disciplines. The global business major opens the door to even more language options.
In an age when fluency in many languages provides a competitive edge in many fields, URI graduates are perfectly poised to cross cultures.