In CENES, our undergraduate programs focus on community-building, where UBC students can make new friends and feel at home (and be themselves!) while learning about cultures and languages that may be new to them.

We recently improved our Major and Minor programs to make them easier to understand and easier to complete, so that students don’t get stuck along the way without a required course or prerequisite. In fact, there are NO prerequisites in our programs. We want to help you forward, not hold you back! Our language courses have no traditional midterms and final exams. Instead, we encourage students to develop portfolios and final projects that are cumulative expressions of their learning.

Our programs inspire students for their multilingual, multicultural future throughout their lives — including making new friends, finding jobs, networking, planning travel and seeking out discovery, self-reflection, relationship-building, communication and engagement with a complex and often difficult world. We encourage our students to seek out joy, connection and exploration as they learn with us and with each other.

We know that UBC can be a vast, anonymous and sometimes confusing place, and CENES Majors and Minors in German, Nordic, Slavic and Modern European Studies offer students a place to cultivate a satisfied mind and a hopeful future for themselves and their communities.