FAQs
Questions
Eligibility Requirements
Types of Fellowships and Appropriate Uses
Selecting Fellows and Making Awards
Please do not hesitate to contact the CES FLAS Coordinator, Dr. Petia Kostadinova at petiak@ces.ufl.edu or (352) 392-8902 x 207.
Answers
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Graduate students who are U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals or permanent U.S. residents, and who are enrolled (or accepted for enrollment) in a program that combines modern foreign language training with international or area studies or with the international aspects of professional or other fields of study are eligible.
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No. The program law specifies that only graduate students are eligible award recipients.
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A FLAS can be awarded for either a full academic year or summer.
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FLAS fellowships are awarded for:
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A formal domestic or overseas academic program of full-time study during the academic year
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Dissertation research abroad during the academic year.
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A formal program of intensive language study during the summer.
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Academic year FLAS fellows who are not conducting dissertation research must be enrolled full-time in both language and area or international studies courses, regardless of whether they are studying in the U.S. or abroad. This is why FLAS fellows are asked to list their entire course load during the award period on the Student Performance Report. In addition, students using their FLAS award abroad must remain enrolled at his or her home institution.
Academic year FLAS fellows conducting dissertation research must be extensively using foreign language sources at the advanced level in order to be considered to fulfill the requirement. The academic year FLAS award should provide the fellow with the equivalent of a full academic year’s worth of formal language training.
- Can an academic year FLAS recipient take a semester or quarter off and finish work for the award period during the summer of following academic year?
No. Students who do not complete their FLAS requirements during the original award period forfeit the remaining portion of their awards. Similarly, if extenuating circumstances prevent a student from accepting/using a FLAS academic year award during the academic year, the fellowship is forfeited and subsequently awarded to a deserving alternate on the FLAS list.
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May a student request a “Pass/Fail” grade, even though there is a specified grading system (letter grade or percent grade) in place for the course?
No. FLAS program regulations (§657.3) specify a student’s grade point average and the institution’s performance-based instruction program as a eligibility requirements. Therefore, allowing a student to take a course “Pass/Fail” is contrary to these requirements, and it diminishes the capacity to assess the student’s progress and language training in a quantifiable and meaningful way. Additionally, when IEPS reviews FLAS annual and final performance reports, it is much easier to see the overall merit of the FLAS fellowship if discrete grades are indicated on the performance report.
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The program law and regulations do not restrict the cumulative number of academic year or summer fellowships you may award to the same student. What you may not do, however, is to give the same student more than one academic year fellowship or more than one summer fellowship during a single award period.
Only students who are at the advanced level of language proficiency can be approved to use a FLAS for dissertation research. The use of language in dissertation research must be extensive enough to be able to consider the foreign language improvement facilitated by the research equal to the improvement that would be obtained from a full academic year’s worth of formal classroom instruction. Given that the legislative intent of the FLAS fellowship program is language acquisition an that IEPS has a separate dissertation fellowship program (Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program) with an annual competition, IEPS does not encourage the use of the FLAS program for dissertation research
Students wishing to use an award to an approved overseas language program must be at the intermediate or advanced level of language proficiency. Students can be at the beginning level only if an appropriate beginning language program in the student’s target language is not available in the United States.
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May we make FLAS awards in Latin, Sanskrit, Classical Greek, Classical Chinese, Old Church Slavonic or other ancient languages?
FLAS fellowships are to support the study of modern foreign languages. You may use FLAS awards for ancient languages only if it clearly supports language and area studies in the related modern foreign language.
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The IEPS threshold for determining the number of contact hours for a summer language program meets the “intensive” requirement is 140 or more hours of instruction for students at the beginning and intermediate levels, and 120 hours for advanced-level students. The summer FLAS awards should provide each fellow with the equivalent of a full academic year’s worth of language instruction, and students must attend a program that is a minimum of 6 weeks in length.
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