The East Asian Studies Center successfully secured two major grants this month, for a total of $2.3 million, from the U.S. Department of Education under its Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship programs. This funding for 2014-2018, coupled with collaborations with a host of units at OSU and across the State of Ohio and beyond, will allow EASC to effectively address its mission of training undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at OSU and of promoting East Asian knowledge among K-16 teachers and students as well as among military, government, and business sectors and the general public in the Midwest and the nation.   

The NRC grant, $244,000 annually for four years, will support carefully developed projects that address the mission and priorities of the Title VI program. Such projects include promoting East Asian knowledge and expertise through support for courses, conferences, lecture series, cultural events, professionalization workshops, teacher training, and collaborative activities with community colleges and minority-serving institutions.

The FLAS Fellowship grant, $339,000 annually for four years, will allow the Center to support undergraduate, graduate and professional students who are studying Chinese, Japanese, Korean or other East Asian languages and area studies. This amount represents an increase from the previous cycle, which coupled with the significant support from the Graduate School in the form of matching tuition awards, will allow EASC to increase the number of students it supports in the coming years.

 The support of the Office of International Affairs, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School were instrumental in successfully securing these grants. EASC would like to thank the above units as well as the Office of the Provost for providing generous bridge funding for FLAS fellows while competition results were pending.