The Center for the Languages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR) is dedicated to promoting the teaching and learning of the languages and cultures of Central Asia. CeLCAR is developing textbooks, multimedia resources, and distance language learning courses for Pashto, Tajik, Uyghur, Uzbek, and Kazakh, as well as improved teacher training in these languages. Its major sources of funding are the US Department of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, the National Security Education Program (NSEP), and other organizations. CeLCAR fosters interest in and knowledge of Central Asian languages and their cultures while meeting strategic national needs. CeLCAR is one of fourteen Title VI Foreign Language Resource Centers in the United States and the only one dedicated to the critical languages of the Central Asian region.

SLCP Announcement
Indiana University has recently been awarded a two-year federal grant to establish a pilot program in Strategic Languages and Cultures Program (SLCO) for undergraduate students in Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs. The Institute of International Education (IIE), on behalf of the National Security Education Program (NSEP)of the U.S. Department of Defense, selected IU's ROTC Strategic Languages and Cultures Program to participate in this new initiative. Under IU's program, up to 25 ROTC cadets enrolled at IU or other universities will receive scholarships to study a strategic language and culture at IU's intensive summer language workshop, during which the cadets will complete a year's worth of training in eight to nine weeks. The languages covered by IU's program are Arabic, Russian, and the Central Asian languages Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Pashto, Tajik, Turkmen, Uyghur and Uzbek. After the summer workshop, IU's program will provide the ROTC cadets with additional funding to continue language and culture training in the 2007-08 academic year, either at IU, language programs at their home universities, or through distance education courses provided by IU faculty. The grant will allow CeLCAR to develop two new distant education courses - Elementary and Advanced Pashto - to be offered in the academic year 2007/2008. For more information, please see the SLCP website or the Indiana University press release