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Eight Students Granted Full-Year FLAS Awards
01/03/2008

Eight Students Granted Full-Year FLAS Awards
By Ria M. Riesner

This year, eight students were awarded FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) grants from the US Department of Education. The awards, covering tuition and stipend, were used to fund a year’s tuition for seven students in the MAAS program (MA of Arab Studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies) and one who is pursuing a PhD in the Arabic department.

The FLAS award, as part of the National Defense Education Act/Title VI, was financed by the US Department of Education in 1958 to increase the number of American experts in area and language studies. As an example, in 1958 India was the world's largest democracy and a leader of the non-aligned movement of approximately 120 countries. In that same year, approximately 23 American students were studying Hindi. Even fewer people spoke any of the dozens of other dialects in India. Today, the United States faces a familiar lack of speakers of Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Turkish.

The FLAS award consists of a $15,000 yearly tuition payment and a $12,000 stipend payable over one academic year and attracts a wide pool of qualified applicants. Applications for next year’s FLAS award are posted on the NRC website.

This year’s FLAS awardees come from a wide variety of backgrounds, and most have had experience either studying or working in the Middle East. Most of these students speak an advanced level of Arabic, and others are fluent in Persian and other relevant languages. There are journalists and gender studies specialists, individuals researching Arab media, and others studying the history of grassroots political organization in Arab countries.

This year’s FLAS full-year awardees are:

 

  • Kody Akhavi - MAAS
  • Adam Coogle - MAAS
  • Harald Fuller-Bennet - MAAS
  • Chris Gratien - MAAS
  • Sam Harris - MAAS
  • Sarah Kaiksow - MAAS
  • Youniss Mirza - Arabic
  • Dena Takruri - MAAS

CCAS congratulates all of these students on this impressive achievement.

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