Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships

Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships support students taking less-commonly taught language and area studies coursework. This program provides both academic year and summer fellowships to graduate  and undergraduate students at the intermediate level and above. The Carolina Asia Center’s priority languages for FLAS include Chinese, Hindi-Urdu, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. (Other languages, such as Arabic and Persian, are also eligible for those with a career or research focus that will apply these languages in South, Southeast, or East Asia.) Other Asian languages not taught at UNC are eligible for summer fellowships.

The goals of the program include:

1. to assist in the development of knowledge, resources, and trained personnel for modern foreign language and area/international studies;

2. to stimulate the attainment of foreign language acquisition and fluency; and

3. to develop a pool of international experts to meet national needs.

FLAS Fellowships are possible because of grants provided from the U.S. Department of Education to the UNC area and global studies centers.

If you have further questions, please contact cac@unc.edu.

Eligibility

All applicants must meet the following criteria, in addition to any specific requirements for the particular language of application.

• Students must be a U.S. citizen by birth or naturalization, or a permanent resident.

• For Academic Year fellowships, graduate students must be enrolled in a program of graduate or professional study by the start of the Fellowship, but may apply in advance of admissions notification.

• For Summer fellowships, you may be a prospective graduate student as long as you can demonstrate graduate or professional school admission during the upcoming Fall. You may apply in advance of admissions notification.

• Graduate students must study the language at the intermediate or advanced level. If applying as a beginner, you must have advanced-level knowledge of another regionally-related language (for example, if applying as a beginner in Japanese, you must have advanced knowledge of Chinese, or any other Asian language).

• At the undergraduate level, only students at the intermediate or higher level in the less commonly taught language of application are eligible.

• Students should be enrolled (or accepted to soon enroll) at UNC-Chapel Hill or one of our designated partner institutions in the state of North Carolina.

Types of Fellowships

• Summer

Summer FLAS Fellowships provide a $3,500 stipend and up to $5,000 for tuition and fees for approved intensive summer language courses in the U.S. or abroad.  Consult with individual FLAS coordinators for travel costs in excess of the stipend.

FLAS students are permitted to receive additional funding from other sources to support their intensive language programs as long as they do not duplicate what is covered by the FLAS fellowships. For example, if a student receives funding from other sources to cover 100% of tuition and fees, his or her FLAS fellowship will not cover tuition and fees but will provide a $3,500 stipend. If other funding sources cover only a portion of tuition and fees (e.g. half), FLAS can cover the remaining cost of tuition and fees up to $5,000 and a $3,500 stipend. Students are required to report any additional funds from other sources for their intensive language program to their FLAS Coordinators.

To be eligible for FLAS funding, summer language programs must be at least six weeks in length and include 120 contact hours of language instruction for advanced-level students OR 140 contact hours for intermediate-level students.

Note for students hoping to study languages overseas: Any overseas study requires permissions from both the relevant UNC offices and the US Department of Education.

• Academic Year

Academic year FLAS Fellowships provide a stipend plus support for tuition and fees. Fellows are required to take at least one language and one area studies course each semester.

The FLAS Fellowship will provide a $20,000 stipend to a graduate student plus full UNC tuition and fees. If you are selected as a FLAS fellow, you are required to obtain a confirmation from your home/academic department stating that the department will cover any required difference between the FLAS stipend and your graduate school’s minimum allowance.

The FLAS fellowship will provide a $20,000 stipend to professional school students, plus UNC tuition and fees up to the cost of in-state tuition in the Graduate School of the College of Arts and Sciences. If you are selected as a FLAS fellow, the CAC will work with you to request funding from your home department or school to cover any remaining gaps in coverage, but we cannot guarantee funding from your department to make up any remaining tuition or fees.

The FLAS Fellowship will provide a $5,000 stipend to an undergraduate student, plus up to $10,000 in UNC tuition and fees.  

FLAS fellowships could affect financial aid packages. We recommend that if awarded you contact the Office of Student Financial Aid to determine the fellowship’s affect on your financial aid package.

Selection

FLAS committees review all proposals and rank them using a weighted scale that considers academic merit, demonstrated financial need, and the extent to which the proposed study or use of the language matches Title VI priorities.