“I tried it and got really good at it,” he says. “It’s become the driving force of my college career. I have my majors, but my minor is behind it all.”

While foreign-language course enrollments are dropping nationally, the number of language majors at URI has increased, and experts in the field of international education are taking note.

Jean-Rene Lemoine, a contemporary French playwright, director and actor, will visit classrooms and deliver a staged reading of his play “Erzuli Dahomey, Goddess of Love” on Oct. 23 as part of the University of Rhode Island’s Distinguished Visiting International Artist Program.

Five University of Rhode Island students have been awarded Boren Scholarships of up to $20,000 to study foreign languages abroad – three in China, and one each in Indonesia and Senegal.

Lars Erickson has been named a Chevalier (or Knight) of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. The award recognizes his outstanding achievements at promoting the study of the French language and culture.

18 URI students received grants from the Beatrice S. Demers Foreign Language Fellows fund to study overseas. The fellowships to study in Jordan, China, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Chile cover the costs of tuition, housing and travel.

Ian Kanterman, a cancer survivor, has been celebrating life since he arrived at URI. He studied and worked in France for a year as part of the French International Engineering Program.

Xiaoyan Hu’s personalized, results-oriented, real-world approach to exciting students about learning Chinese earned her the Teacher of the Year Award from the Rhode Island Foreign Language Association.

Three engineering students at the University of Rhode Island are traveling to Germany soon to study and do internships thanks to scholarships from the German government and a fourth will participate in an exchange program.