The School of Foreign Studies is an academic and research entity established by the university to achieve the goal of building a high-level local comprehensive university with distinctive water conservancy features. The school currently has a master's degree program in Foreign Language and Literature, a provincial key cultivation discipline in Foreign Language and Literature, and five sub-discipline master's degree programs including English Language and Literature, Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, International and Regional Studies, Translation and Subject Teaching (English). It is responsible for teaching public foreign languages (including postgraduate and doctoral public English) and second foreign languages in five languages (English, Japanese, French, German, Korean) for all undergraduate and postgraduate students. The School of Foreign Languages consists of the following departments and centers:
- The Department of College Foreign Languages
- The Department of English
- The Department of French
- The Department of Japanese
- The MTI (Master of Translation and Interpreting) Education Center
- The Center for Subject Teaching (English) Education
- The Research Center for Countries and Regions
- The International Education Center
- The Management Center for Academic Competitions and Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- The Demonstration Center for Experimental Teaching of English Language Learning
Currently, the school has 860 full-time undergraduate students, 222 graduate students, and 17 international graduate students.The school is home to a faculty of 114 full-time teachers, including 7 professors, 54 associate professors, 28 academic tutors, and 38 professional tutors. It also employs around 10 foreign teachers annually and collaborates with over 20 well-known figures in the field of foreign languages, part-time professors, and visiting professors.
The school actively strengthens its discipline construction and has established several national platforms, including the Confucius Institute in N'Djamena, Chad, the National Research Center for Country and Regional Studies in Nepal, and the Sino-Foreign Cultural Exchange Research Institute in the Water Conservancy and Electric Power Industry. It has been recognized by the Ministry of Education as one of the first universities to reform English teaching and as one of the "demonstration project schools" for university English teaching reform. In 2015, the Master in Translation and Interpreting (MTI) program successfully passed the Ministry of Education's qualification assessment. In 2020, the English major was selected as a provincial first-class undergraduate major construction point, and in 2022, it was selected as a national first-class undergraduate major construction point. The school also completed the expert visit for the secondary teacher certification (English major with a specialism in teaching) work.
The school is actively exploring cooperation with foreign universities, consolidating existing partnerships, and expanding the scope and channels of cooperation. It assists the university in running the demonstration base for international students in China, the Chinese language education base, and the Nepal Research Center. It actively participates in the construction of the Confucius Institute at the University of N'Djamena in Chad, continues to send Chinese deans and teachers, and deepens cooperation with Tribhuvan University in Nepal, the University of the Punjab in Pakistan, Erbil University of Technology in Iraq, Kyoto University of Foreign Studies in Japan, and Nara College in Japan. Building on existing cooperation with foreign universities, the college is further expanding its exchange and cooperation with overseas universities and academic institutions, gradually establishing a multi-faceted model for cooperative training and research, facilitating the exchange of personnel and sharing of resources.