The federally funded and regulated Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship program supports graduate training in modern foreign languages and related area studies. Academic-year awards provide a $15,000 stipend and full tuition (however, some Centers expect the student’s home department to cover tuition). Summer awards provide up to $2,500 as a stipend and up to $1,000 for tuition.

Entering students in all disciplines may apply for academic-year awards. Students must take language and area studies courses for a letter grade during the academic year if in residence at UCLA. Currently approved area programs are East Asia, Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Currently approved languages include, for East Asia: Mandarin, Japanese and Korean; for Europe and Eurasia: Armenian, Azerbaijani, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian; for Latin America: Portuguese, Quechua and advanced Spanish; for the Middle East: Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish; and for Southeast Asia: Indonesian, Filipino/Tagalog, Khmer, Thai and Vietnamese.

To apply for a FLAS fellowship, students must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Since the purpose of the program is to enrich the nation’s pool of area and international specialists, applicants must be planning to use their training to teach, to serve in government or international agencies or to engage in other work that advances American understanding of other countries. Fellowship recipients must be engaged in full-time study for the duration of their awards and must submit reports on the courses they pursue and the progress they make.

Awardees must take oral proficiency tests in the target language at the beginning and end of the FLAS award period and must agree to report to the U.S. Department of Education annually for 10 years on their careers/occupations so that the Department can monitor the use FLAS recipients make of their language skills.

All FLAS applications must be completed online by the February 19, 2013 deadline. Links to the application can be found on each of the websites of the Centers below as well as on the website of the UCLA International Institute. Required information includes a statement of purpose outlining one’s research and language-study plans, language-proficiency certification or evaluation, two letters of recommendation, transcripts, and CV.