The U.S. Department of Education awarded more than $71 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 new and non-competing continuation grants to help strengthen the capacity and performance of American education in world languages, world area and international studies, and research. The grant programs are authorized under the Fulbright-Hays Act, also known as the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, and Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, and are administered by the International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE) office in the Office of Postsecondary Education.

Through these programs, the Department aims to prepare America's students with the global competencies necessary to become leaders who are highly competent in world languages, international studies, and the critical thinking skills to fill roles in national security, diplomacy, international business, and education. These grants support our students, teachers, faculty, administrators, and institutions of higher education as they engage in projects focused on international studies, world languages, cross-cultural understanding and research.

In addition to supporting foreign language and area studies instruction and research, Title VI and Fulbright-Hays grantees will use the FY 2018 grant awards to create interdisciplinary curriculum projects, incorporate international education into pre-service teacher training, establish and strengthen collaborations with minority-serving institutions and community colleges, conduct outreach, and develop programs that expand global opportunities for K–16 educators.

An overview of FY 2018 new and non-competing continuation grant awards is as follows:

New Awards

• 15 Title VI Centers for International Business Education awards ($4,571,400)
• 105 Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships institutional awards ($30,852,116)
• 16 Title VI Language Resource Centers ($2,746,768)
• 96 Title VI National Resource Centers ($22,743,107)
• 21 Title VI Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language program awards ($1,684,028)
• 100 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowships ($3,744,983)
• 19 Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad awards ($2,507,907)
• 2 Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad conducted in summer 2018, supporting 32 teacher participants ($498,400)
  
  

Non-Competing Continuation Awards

• 10 continuation awards for Title VI American Overseas Research Centers ($650,000)
• 8 continuation awards for Title VI International Research and Studies projects ($712,329)
• 5 continuation awards for the Title VI Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language program ($669,689)

For further details, including the links to the lists of grantees and abstracts, please click the "Read More" button below.

The Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad program supported 32 U.S. educators as they traveled to Ecuador and Poland in July and August 2018. The program provides short-term seminars abroad for U.S. teachers and school administrators to improve their understanding and knowledge of the people and cultures of other countries. Participants draw on their experiences abroad to create new curricula for their classrooms and school systems back in the U.S.

The four-week seminar in Ecuador (right) for secondary school teachers focused on the impact of Ecuador’s history, biodiversity, and cultural diversity. Participants visited Quito, rural communities, and the Galapagos Islands to examine the historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that led to the creation of Ecuador's “plurinational” society. The seminar explored the current challenges that Ecuadorians face in their culture, society, and environment, and participants had the opportunity to engage in round-table discussions with Ecuadorian educators, professionals, indigenous and community leaders, and government officials. One educator from Baltimore, Maryland, shared her experiences from the seminar in a blog post through National Geographic's Open Explorer initiative. 

The four-week seminar in Poland for postsecondary educators (left) explored the relationship between the United States and Poland through the lenses of politics, national security, culture, and economics. Participants traveled across the country to see historical sites as well as fast-growing areas (Warsaw, Cracow, Wroclaw, and Gdansk) to experience the richness of Polish culture and meet outstanding Polish scholars from academic centers. Educators took part in discussions and cultural events designed to promote networking with specialists from different academic disciplines and to experience the spirit of contemporary Poland. 

Now that they have returned to the United States, seminar participants will use their experiences in Ecuador and Poland to incorporate global content into existing curricula or to develop new curricula for their courses. They will also share what they have learned via dissemination projects and outreach activities with students, institutions, and colleagues locally and throughout the country.

Leela Hazzah (right) is the executive director and cofounder of Lion Guardians, a conservation organization dedicated to finding and enacting long term solutions for people and lions to coexist across Africa. Leela founded the organization after conducting research in Kenya with the support of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowship. IFLE senior program officer Pamela Maimer interviewed Hazzah to learn more about her work and the impact the DDRA fellowship has made on her life and career.

How did you become so interested in lion conservation and working with Maasai warriors?

My interest in large mammal conservation started at a very young age. I first started out as an elephant biologist in Tanzania and later in northern Kenya. During my stint in northern Kenya I heard a lot about severe lion decline due to conflict with pastoralists. I was offered an opportunity at that time to work on a lion conservation project in southern Kenya where lion killing was rampant, so in 2005 I joined this project to try to understand the motivations behind lion killing. I focused my master’s research on this topic, and in 2007 I continued this work through my Ph.D., where I was honored to have received a DDRA fellowship. 

How did your time as a DDRA fellow help shape your current work?
DDRA provided me the much-needed support to carry out my research. The fellowship allowed me to focus on my research and greater conservation impact rather than spending time on finding funding. Because my research focused on understanding lion killing, which was the responsibility of Maasai warriors, I got to spend a lot of time with them to really learn about their traditional roles in the community and how gaining prestige was exceptionally important to these men. Making the link between culture and conservation was a natural progression and was possible because of the time I was able to spend in the field. The idea for Lion Guardians evolved through the time spent in the community during my master's research and the close relationship I built with Maasai warriors. 

What is Lion Guardians and what does it do?

Lion Guardians is a conservation model adaptable to various cultures and wildlife species. Founded on local value systems, community participation, and science, it is based on a decade of research and rigorous measures of success. Our approach involves recruiting young, traditional Maasai and other pastoralist warriors to learn the skills needed to effectively mitigate conflicts between people and wildlife, monitor lion populations, and help their own communities live with lions. By actively engaging in our solutions-based conservation model, people who were once lion killers are transformed into lion protectors.

Lion Guardians was founded by myself and Stephanie Dolrenry—first piloted in 2006 and officially launched in 2007. We started with five guardians and now have over 40 covering close to 4000 km² in southern Kenya. We have tested our model in other countries and with other cultures and have seen similar positive results. Our strategy to scaling our work and broadening our impacts in the conservation space is all around sharing our knowledge through customized training and coaching. 

What do you find to be the most interesting part of your work?

I love working with warriors and adapting our model to new cultures and trying to find opportunities so carnivores and people can coexist and thrive.

What advice would you give incoming DDRA fellows? 

Receiving a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship is an exceptional honor, and so I would strongly suggest to use this as an opportunity to think bigger than just your research project, and strive to have more applied impacts that are long-lasting.

“Alarming new rumors were in circulation all day yesterday,” said Marissa Rhee, project archivist for exhibits at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. “The Bolsheviks are undoubtedly preparing something in Petrograd. But what? A bluff, or really the seizure of power?”

Rhee was reading from a recently translated diary entry written on Oct. 25, 1917, as the Russian Revolution was unfolding. The diary was just one of several archival sources on display at the Hoover Library and Archives (part of the Hoover Institution) during a special course about the revolution for middle school, high school, and community college instructors. The course is one of many professional development offerings for local teachers developed by Stanford University Global Studies and the university's Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, with partial funding from a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers grant.

Crystal Dunn, who teaches world history and AP European history at Madera High School in Madera, California, hoped to find new artifacts through the course that she could share with her students. She brought back pictures of the original letters written by the imperial Romanov children while they were in exile, which helped personalize their story for her students. “I was able to bring my own learning to a higher level through the lectures, and I left with resources, including formative assessments, which I was able to use in my classroom the next week — and my students were successful with them,” she said.

2018 marks 60 years since the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was signed into law. The NDEA’s Title VI funding underwrote the dramatic and transformative expansion of language and area studies at all levels of education across the U.S. Today, Title VI is far from the only model or source of funding, and yet it continues to sustain and advance international education as well as adapt to a changing landscape. 

In the past 60 years, the need for global learning, international understanding, and language and cultural skills has only become more pressing. This symposium, hosted by Indiana University, Oct. 25–27, seeks to take stock of the current environment and needs, and to identify ways of addressing them. It brings together experts in language, area, and global studies with policy makers and other scholars to discuss the future of international education. The symposium explores international education within diverse educational and practical contexts. It also considers our responsibility to craft new narratives, practices, and modes of funding within a rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape, while recognizing the vital, though sometimes mercurial, role of education around the world. Ultimately, the symposium looks to the future while exploring the many crossroads currently faced in the field.

For more information and to register for the symposium, please click the "Read More" button below.

Expand your horizons — study abroad! The U.S. Department of State offers merit-based scholarships for American high school students to study abroad from three weeks to an academic year. Students live with host families, engage with local schools, and gain skills to be competitive in the global workforce. Previous language study is not required for most programs.

YES Abroad: Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Abroad

• Study in countries with significant Muslim populations in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, or the Balkans
• Application Deadline: Dec. 4, 2018
• Length: academic year
• Scholarship: fully funded
  
  

CBYX: Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange

• Explore German culture and language
• Application Deadline: Dec. 11, 2018
• Length: academic year
• Scholarship: covers most costs
  
  

NSLI-Y: National Security Language Initiative for Youth

• Immerse yourself in Arabic, Indonesian, Mandarin, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Russian, or Turkish
• Application Deadline: Oct. 30, 2018
• Length: six-week summer or academic year
• Scholarship: fully funded
  
  

Youth Ambassadors

• Learn about civic education, do community service, and develop leadership skills in Central and South America
• Application: December/January
• Length: three weeks in the summer
• Scholarship: fully funded
  

IFLE is on Twitter with the latest from the world of international and foreign language education. Follow us @GoGlobalED and tell your friends! We'll see you in the Twittersphere!

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Have you received a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship or participated in a Fulbright-Hays grant program? Join our alumni groups on LinkedIn!

FLAS Program Alumni          Fulbright-Hays Program Alumni

We seek motivated students who are eager to learn and work as part of our team as an unpaid full- or part-time intern during the summer, fall, and/or spring. Visit our website for more information.

We want to hear from you! Do you have suggestions for webinar topics? Ideas for things to include in future newsletters? Send them to Carolyn Collins at carolyn.collins@ed.gov.