The U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships program provides academic-year and summer fellowships to support undergraduate and graduate students with training in modern foreign languages and related area or international studies.

The purpose of the program is to enrich the nation’s pool of area and international specialists. Applicants should 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.

• The academic-year FLAS graduate student award provides a $20,000 stipend as well as $18,000 in tuition and fees.

• The academic-year FLAS undergraduate student award provides a stipend of $5,000 and up to $10,000 in fees and tuition.

• Summer FLAS awards for both undergraduate and graduate students provide a $3,500 stipend and up to $5,000 in fees and tuition.

FLAS fellowships are awarded through the following UCLA International Institute centers. For detailed information and application requirements, please contact the center that administers your language of interest.

Asia Pacific Center
Eligible languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean
Contact: Aaron Miller / armiller@international.ucla.edu

Center for European and Russian Studies
Eligible languages: Basque, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Yiddish
Contact: Liana Grancea / lgrancea@international.ucla.edu

Center for Near Eastern Studies
Eligible languages: Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish
Contact: Badema Pitic / pitic@international.ucla.edu

Center for Southeast Asian Studies
Eligible languages: Burmese, Hmong, Indonesian, Filipino/Tagalog, Khmer, Lao, Thai and Vietnamese
Contact: Nguyet Tong / ntong@international.ucla.edu

Latin American Institute
Summer  | Academic Year
Eligible languages: Nahuatl, Portuguese, Quechua, and Advanced Spanish
Contact: Bryan Pitts / bpitts@international.ucla.edu

General Eligibility Information

To apply for a FLAS fellowship, students must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. New and continuing graduate students in all disciplines may apply for academic-year and summer awards.

Students must be studying the target language at the intermediate or advanced level.

The academic-year fellowship requires that students take one language and one area studies course for a letter grade each term during the award period.

Summer fellowships are for intensive language study only.

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. Awards may be used for dissertation research, but this must be approved in advance and has the lowest priority.

All FLAS applications must be completed online. The application is available through the International Institute centers listed above.

The deadline for applications is January 31, 2025. 
 

Questions? Please review the FLAS Frequently Asked Questions and contact your center FLAS coordinator.