Funding of Language Initiative at Flagship Universities

Monday, July 15, 2002

The National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland has announced the award of four institutional grants as the next major step in implementing the National Security Education Program's (NSEP) National Flagship Language Initiative Pilot Program. These grants - to the University of Hawaii; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Washington; and Brigham Young University - provide important resources to further the development of curriculum and programming designed to graduate professionals with high levels of proficiency in languages critical to U.S national security. The pilot flagship efforts will focus on Arabic, Chinese, and Korean.

The new pilot grants have been awarded based on a merit review process initiated by NFLC in April, 2002. NFLC, together with a panel of language experts, reviewed more than 15 proposals for programs in six different languages.

NSEP and NFLC have expressed a commitment to developing and implementing a fully funded National Flagship Language Initiative focused on additional languages critical to national security, such as Farsi, Hindi, Japanese, Russian and Turkish, as well as additional flagship programs in Arabic, Chinese and Korean. The NFLI represents the nation's first effort to develop programs in higher education that will implement a curriculum to achieve competence at the superior level in these critical languages. The pilot grants will focus, during the first year, on curriculum development and diagnostic testing. Limited student funding will be made available in the 2003-2004 academic year.

The NFLC acts as NSEP's administrative agent and substantive expert for the NFLI and will be working closely with each flagship program to ensure success.