Background
The FIC was a non-profit, all-volunteer organization founded in 1961 (dissolved September 2021) whose mission statement was to support international education, to foster friendship, understanding, and cooperation within the international community, and to create a meeting place on the UC San Diego campus for people who share these aims. This mission may not seem novel in present times, but, at the time, the concept of global citizenship did not exist and the very word “foreign” often engendered fear rather than igniting curiosity. The FIC operated a variety of programs, building cross-national community while supporting international scholars and their families at UC San Diego, as well as funding an academic student support program for both undergraduate students studying abroad and graduate students whose work had an international component and/or global relevance.
The FIC student support program began with a single award in 1975 and at its peak, before the pandemic of 2020, awarded 41 scholarships to undergraduate students and 32 fellowships to graduate students. Over the life of the FIC student support program, it has awarded over $1 million to UC San Diego scholars. Upon the dissolution of FIC in 2021, a new endowment fund was created to support graduate student fellowships in perpetuity. The Graduate Division will be awarding Friends of the International Center (Friends) fellowships to UC San Diego graduate students for 2022-23.