The East Asian Studies Center, Center for Latin American Studies and Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies have awarded more than $1.63 million in student support this year in the form of 65 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship grants to Ohio State students spanning 14 graduate programs and nine undergraduate majors. For Summer 2021, more than $97,000 in awards supported 11 graduate and professional students and four undergraduate students in their pursuit of intensive language study. For Academic Year 2021-2022, more than $1,533,000 in awards will support 34 graduate and professional students and 16 undergraduate students pursuing language and area studies across many disciplines. Funding for FLAS Fellowships comes from the U.S. Department of Education under Title VI of the Higher Education Act and is subsidized by generous matching funding from The Ohio State University Graduate School. 

This year’s FLAS fellowships support the development of area studies knowledge and language fluency in 11 languages, with 60 percent of fellows pursuing language study at the advanced level. The East Asian Studies Center awarded funding to six graduate students in Summer 2021 and 15 graduate and professional students in Academic Year 2021-2022 to support advanced studies of Chinese, Japanese and Korean. The Center for Latin American Studies awarded funding to three graduate and three undergraduate students in Summer 2021 and six graduate and professional students and 11 undergraduate students in Academic Year 2021-2022 to support the study of Portuguese and Quechua. The Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies awarded funding to two graduate students and one undergraduate student in Summer 2021 and 13 graduate students and five undergraduate students in Academic Year 2021-2022 to support the study of Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish and Uzbek. 

Summer FLAS Fellows complete the equivalent of a full year of language study in an intensive program (usually 6-10 weeks long). The fellowship covers up to $5,000 of the language program’s tuition, provides a $2,500 stipend, and in some instances, up to $1,000 towards international travel. This summer, while many programs were cancelled in the wake of COVID-19, the three OSU FLAS-granting centers, with support from the U.S. Department of Education, were able to support fellows in identifying alternate programs to continue their language study. 

Academic year FLAS Fellowships are awarded to undergraduate, graduate, or professional students who are enrolled in a course of study at Ohio State that requires both language and area studies expertise. Students are required to take one language and one area studies course in both autumn and spring semesters, completing one academic year language sequence. The fellowship provides a stipend of $15,000 and tuition support up to $18,000 for graduate and professional students. For undergraduate students, it provides a stipend of $5,000 and tuition and fees up to $10,000. 

FLAS Fellowships often provide graduate students with funding so that they can focus on language acquisition during the course of the fellowship while not needing to hold a graduate associate position to fund their studies that year. 

View the complete list of Summer 2021 and Academic Year 2021-2022 FLAS Fellowship Grant recipients.