About FLAS Fellowships

FLAS Fellowships support graduate and undergraduate study in modern foreign languages in combination with area studies, international studies, or international or area aspects of professional studies. The following languages, classified by Center, are approved by the U.S. Department of Education for FLAS fellowships at Illinois. Note: undergraduates cannot apply to study French, German, or Spanish. Undergraduate fellowships are only available for intermediate to advanced study of less commonly taught languages, which are defined as modern languages other than Spanish, German or French.

If a language is offered by more than one center, students can apply to all Centers that offer the language. For example, Polish is offered by EUC, CGS, and REEEC. If you are applying to study Polish, you can apply to all three centers at the same time. You do not need to submit separate on-line application forms (please simply check all the centers to which you apply on the form) but need to submit a complete set of supporting documents for each center to which you are applying.

• Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies (CEAPS): Advanced Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Tibetan. CEAPS is accepting applications only from graduate students. Undergraduate students are not eligible to apply thorough CEAPS.

• Center for Global Studies (CGS): Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Lingala, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian or Croatian, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, or Wolof; or at the advanced level (third-year or above) Chinese or Japanese.

• Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS): Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua or any other Amerindian Language, or at the advanced level (third-year or above) Spanish.

• European Union Center (EUC): Arabic, Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, French, German, Greek (modern), Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, or Turkish. Priority will be given to less-commonly-taught languages (languages other than French, German, Spanish) and higher-level language study.

• Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC): Bosnian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian, Turkish, or Ukrainian.

FLAS Fellowships are administered by the University of Illinois Area Studies Centers and Programs and are awarded competitively through an annual competition. Students from all departments and professional schools are encouraged to apply. Priority is given to the study of less commonly taught languages and each Center has specific priorities.

A standardized FLAS application form is available on-line through this Web site. Graduate students should visit the Graduate Students Instructions page to access the on-line application form and for more inofmation; undergraduate students should visit the Undergraduate Instructions page to access the on-line application form and for more information.
Graduate student applications are submitted by the student’s department; undergraduate applications are submitted directly by students to the Center to which the student is applying. All applications are due 8 February 2013, 5:00 PM. Graduate students should check with their departments about internal departmental FLAS deadlines. You can find the list of known departmental deadlines here.

Grant Amount

• Academic Year Fellowships
  • Graduate students may receive full tuition and fee waiver and a stipend of $15,000 payable over the academic year. Eligibility for tuition waiver varies by home department and school.
  • Undergraduates receive $10,000 for tuition and fees and a $5,000 stipend.
• Summer Fellowships
  • $5,000 towards tuition for a summer language program as well as required Illinois fees and a $2,500 stipend. In some cases, a travel award may also be made.