Welcome to the Fries Center for Global Studies, Wesleyan’s hub for intercultural and multilingual engagement. Building on the decades of experience at Wesleyan with education abroad, international studies, and language education, the Fries Center was founded in 2015. In 2022, President Michael Roth issued a Presidential Statement on Internationalization that makes explicit what we mean by “internationalization” and sets forth a range of goals for the next five years. The Fries Center’s many inter-related functions and activities can be accessed via our main menu. We also maintain an active blog featuring activities and opportunities (see below) and send out a newsletter every other week with highlights from the blog. Subscribe to the the Wes and the World Newsletter.

The Fries Center tracks and publicizes international events on campus. To submit an event, use the form here. Upcoming events include:

 

Wesleyan and the World

International Education Week 2026 to Launch November 12th!

By Julia Fedoruk ’26 Wesleyan’s annual International Education Week (IEW) 2026 will launch on Thursday, November 12th and run from Monday, November 16th to Saturday, November 21st. International Education week was founded through a collaboration between the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Education to celebrate international educational exchange, prepare American scholars for…

Why Learning Mandarin is So Much Easier in Taiwan, from Natalie Kim ’28

By Natalie Kim ’28 “Why memorize words you’re never going to use?”  Learning a language can be really frustrating. In the U.S., English is by far the most commonly spoken language, and only around one in five people can speak anything else. Without people around you every day to practice speaking with, it’s hard to…
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