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Indiana University Bloomington
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

FLAS Fellowship Grants

FLAS Information Session
Tuesday, December 4, 3 p.m.
IMU Oak Room

General information on eligibility and benefits for Summer and Academic Year awards. Representatives of all IU FLAS Centers will also be on hand to address applicants’ specific questions.

*Although the competition for FLAS Fellowships for Academic Year 2013-2014 will take place as scheduled, funding for the program is contingent upon Congressional appropriations for the federal fiscal year 2013.   Updates regarding appropriations will be available on this web page as soon as they are confirmed.

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.

FLAS Application Tips

Students are eligible to apply for FLAS if she/he is:

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:

FLAS Summer Fellowships award:

FLAS Application deadlines:

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:

  1. One copy of the application for Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (available at http://www.indiana.edu/~flas/)
  2. One complete set of official transcripts of college and university credits
  3. THREE letters of recommendation for the Academic Year or
    TWO letters of recommendation for the Summer

Please see below for answers to commonly asked questions regarding application procedures

Discrepancies with the FLAS online application:

For Summer and Academic Year Awards, the online FLAS application requests a personal statement of 300-500 words. The CLACS selection committees, however, will read statements of up to 1000 words in length. Rather than focusing on word count, you should focus on making the strongest statement possible, keeping in mind the tips outlined below. Please note that this is a policy specific to CLACS. Questions about applications to other IU FLAS Centers should be directed to those Centers.

Important Notes for Summer FLAS Applicants:

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 listings of summer language programs.

In order to comply with FLAS definitions of an Intensive summer language program, your program of study must be at least 6 weeks in duration and include a minimum of 140 instructional contact hours at the Beginning or Intermediate levels, or 120 instructional contact hours at the Advanced level.

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 2013, CLACS will only require two letters of recommendation. The online FLAS application form, however, will require you to identify a third recommender in order to save and complete your application.  As a workaround for Summer applications only, please enter the following information:

Name: FLAS Coordinator
Title: FLAS Coodinator
Affiliation Address: CLACS
Email address: clac[at]indiana.edu
To the right, please select the radio button corresponding to “Reference on File.”

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 will be happy to advise 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.

For questions about how to prepare the content of your proposal, contact CLACS Associate Director Matt Van Hoose: mjvanhoo [at] indiana.edu.

Application Submission FAQ

1. I would like to apply for both a Summer and an Academic Year program. Do I need to submit two separate applications? Yes. This is for internal recordkeeping purposes and because you will need to describe your proposed program of study in different ways for Summer and Academic Year proposals.

2. Can materials from my Academic Year proposal be copied into a Summer proposal? Yes, upon request. If you are filing both Academic Year and Summer applications this year, you may send only one set of transcripts, and we will include copies in both of your files. For any other materials that you would like copied from an Academic Year file into a Summer file, or vice versa - including letters of recommendation - please contact CLACS: clacs[at]indiana.edu.

3. Can elements of an application from a previous year be copied into a current application? Yes. If you have applied for a FLAS Award from CLACS in a previous year, please contact CLACS - clacs[at]indiana.edu - with a detailed list of what portions of your file you would like us to use for your current application. This list can include academic transcripts and, in certain rarer cases, letters of recommendation, although we normally recommend that your letters be as up-to-date as possible.

4. If I am an IU student, does the copy of my IU transcript need to be official? No. In the case of IU transcripts only, we will accept a print-out generated by you through the Onestart Student Center.

5. Can I ask my home department to send you copies of my official transcripts from other universities? Yes, we will accept copies of your official transcripts if they come to us directly from another IU department. These documents should be sent through campus mail to FLAS Application Coordinator, CLACS, 1125 East Atwater Avenue.

6. I received a small amount from several different institutions as I worked toward one of my degrees. Do you require official transcripts from all of those institutions? No, we require transcripts only from the instiutions that granted final degrees.

Graduate Studies at CLACS
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