$9.1 Million to Support Global Studies Programs

Posted on Oct. 15, 2014

Six global and area studies centers at Carolina will receive approximately $9.1 million in competitive federal Title VI grants over the next four years.

The money is split between two programs administered by the U.S. Department of Education — National Resource Centers and Foreign Language and Area Studies scholarships for 2014-15. Federal funding for international education has tightened in the past few years, and this cycle’s application process was especially competitive. In the past cycle, 144 National Resource Centers were funded; in the current cycle, 100 were funded.

“The grants support many key programs in the College of Arts and Sciences and beyond, including language instruction, teaching, research and community outreach that spans the globe,” said Karen M. Gil, dean of the college. “With these international centers, we are educating our students to be the leaders of tomorrow in a fast-changing global society.”

UNC consistently has been among the top U.S. universities in the number of these resource centers with six, which are located in the FedEx Global Education Center. Five area studies centers are part of the college, and the sixth is the pan-university Center for Global Initiatives.

Among the interdisciplinary programs supported through the centers by the federal grant awards are:

• Opening Access to Global Opportunities, which provides opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students pursuing international education;
• Languages Across the Curriculum, which integrates languages — from Arabic and French to Spanish and Korean — into courses offered outside language departments;
• Faculty support for language instruction, research, teaching and curriculum development;
• World View, which helps teachers in community colleges and grades K-12 incorporate international aspects into their courses and activities through seminars and symposia, international study visits abroad and online instruction;
• The UNC School of Education, which collaborates with centers to support internationally focused teacher training programs; and
• Foreign Language and Area Study Fellowships, which provide graduate and advanced undergraduate students with academic year support for language and area studies courses and intensive summer language instruction, with a particular priority on less-commonly taught languages.

Centers receiving the grants are the African Studies Center; the Carolina Asia Center; the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations; the Center for European Studies; the Center for Global Initiatives; and the Institute for the Study of the Americas, which is focused on Latin America.

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