Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) awards are offered to undergraduates for the first time

Mabel Chiang, a UCLA senior majoring in Japanese with a minor in Political Science, is the first recipient of UCLA’s East Asian Undergraduate Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship. The award consists of $15,000 for the 2010-11 academic year to pay for fees and living expenses. Chiang is spending her final year studying at Keio University in Japan through the UC Education Abroad Program.

FLAS fellowships are awarded to students in all disciplines to study foreign languages and related international or area studies in order to increase the nation’s pool of experts with knowledge of world languages and cultures. The FLAS awards have been an important resource for UCLA graduate students whose research and professional goals require advanced proficiency in Chinese, Japanese and Korean for 35 years. Beginning in 2010, Congress has opened up the FLAS fellowship to undergraduates studying a foreign language at the advanced level.

Chiang has known since high school that she wanted study Japanese and International Relations. She has studied Japanese for six years and intends to apply to graduate school next year. She hopes to work as a translator or cultural expert in the foreign service or an international agency.