FLAS Fellowship Grants : Funding Opportunities
FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowships support graduate study of modern foreign languages and related area and international studies in preparation for careers in teaching, reasearch, government service, and international organizations.
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies offers the academic year FLAS fellowship for the following languages: Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Quechua, Spanish, and Yucatec Maya.
FLAS Fellowships can also be sought at the Center for the Study of Global Change for the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and among others. Please visit their webpage for more information at www.indiana.edu/~global/funding/flas.php.
Students are eligible to apply for FLAS if she/he is:
- A US Citizen or Permanent Resident
- Admitted or enrolled in a graduate program in the College of Arts and Sciences or a Professional School at Indiana University-Bloomington.
If awarded a FLAS fellowship, the student must undertake an approved program of foreign language and area studies relevant to his/her academic and career goals.
Academic year FLAS fellowships include:
- Tuition fee remission: 12 credits of course work for each semester- a total of 24 credits/year
- Academic year stipend of $15,000
- Enrollment in graduate student health insurance plan
FLAS Summer Fellowships award:
$6,500 ($4,000 institutional payment and a $2,500 student subsistence allowance)
Important Note for Summer 2009 Submissions:
To apply for a Summer FLAS, due on February 15, you must complete an online FLAS application. You must submit a statement of purpose, two letters of recommendation, and a copy of your transcript (unofficial). IU will not be offering FLAS approved Quechua, Yucatec Maya, Haitian Creole, or Portuguese language courses this summer and therefore you will have to take up residence at a FLAS recommended site. Students must also apply directly to the language program at the FLAS recommended site. Please see the website of the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs for comprehensive listings of summer language programs.
FLAS Application deadlines:
- Academic Year Fall 2009-Spring 2010 due February 1, 2009
- Summer 2009, February 15, 2009
Academic Year & Summer Application procedure:
All FLAS applications must be submitted online at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~flas/
Students who are already enrolled for graduate study at Indiana University, or who have recently completed the steps required for admission, are required to collect the following materials:
- One copy of the application for Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (available at http://www.indiana.edu/~flas/)
- One complete set of official transcripts of college and university credits
- THREE letters of recommendation for the Academic Year or
TWO letters of recommendation for the Summer
Discrepancies with the FLAS online application:
While the FLAS application website states that the application is due on February 1, summer applicants have until February 15 to complete their online applications. Furthermore, the application website states that three letters of recommendation are required, but for summer 2009, CLACS will only require two letters of recommendation.
FLAS Application Tips
CLACS only gets to award a handful of FLAS fellowships each year, and each year the competition for these awards grows stiffer. Here are a few tips to make your FLAS application more competitive:
1. CLACS has a strong commitment to supporting our less-commonly-taught language programs: Haitian Creole, Yucatec Maya, and Quechua. If you intend to study one of these languages then we strongly encourage you to apply for FLAS support!
2. If you are not proposing to study your language at IU then please take the time to investigate the summer language program for which you are applying and make sure that it meets all of our criteria. CLACS has a list of programs that it has already approved and we would be very happy to help you to select the one that is right for you.
3. If you are thinking about applying for a FLAS to study another less-commonly-taught language such as Aymara or K'ichee' at one of the other Consortium universities (such as the University of Illinois) or elsewhere, please contact Dr. Daniel Suslak at dsuslak@indiana.edu for more information about how to proceed.
4. If you are applying for a summer FLAS to do language study outside of the United States, then you must make it clear that your primary intention is language study. In the past, the CLACS selection committee has given lower scores to proposals in which the applicant implied (or stated outright) that he or she would be using the fellowship to support research or other goals.
5. The selection committee is looking for applicants who express a strong commitment to doing work or research in (or related to) Latin America and the Caribbean. The committee also favors applicants who express a strong commitment to mastering the languages that they are studying and using their language skills in graduate school and beyond.
