African Studies Center Wins $2.3 Million Title VI Grants
Boston University’s African Studies Center has been awarded National Resource Center (NRC) and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants from the US Department of Education. The African Studies Center, which joined the new Frederick S. Pardee School for Global Studies this fall, will receive more than $2.3 million over four years to provide fellowships for students and support Africa-focused education, particularly African language instruction.
Founded in 1953, the African Studies Center has long been a national and international leader in training Africa specialists and supporting research focused on Africa. The Center’s mission is to promote knowledge and understanding of the historical, social, political, economic, and ecological diversity of the continent of Africa through maintaining a multidisciplinary community of students, faculty, and researchers from BU and the Boston area with an interest in Africa and encouraging a focus on Africa in teaching and scholarship.
NRC and FLAS grants, part of the Title VI program of the US Office of International and Foreign Language Education, promote greater understanding of countries and regions across the globe through foreign language and area studies instruction and research. According to Timothy Longman, Director of the African Studies Center, “These grants are a recognition of BU’s impressive long-term commitment to African studies and the strength of our faculty.” The Center currently has 114 affiliated faculty members in 35 departments across 11 of BU’s colleges and schools.
“These grants are a recognition of BU’s impressive long-term commitment to African studies and the strength of our faculty.”
– Prof. Timothy Longman
Director, African Studies Center
The African Studies Center places particular focus on instruction in African languages, currently offering courses in Amharic, Igbo, Hausa, Swahili, Wolof, Xhosa, and Zulu. The new NRC grant will allow BU’s African Studies Center to add Twi, a major language spoken in Ghana, to develop on-line components for African languages, and to develop specialized African language courses for students of public health and other professional fields. Strong language instruction has been a major factor contributing to the success of BU graduate students in receiving outside financial support. Over the past year, five BU PhD candidates have won Fulbright-Hays grants and three have won Fulbright grants to conduct field research in Ghana, Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The NRC grant will also support a variety of other programming, including developing new classes with Africa content in disciplines with few Africa-focused courses. The grants will allow BU to develop a partnership for African studies with the University of Massachusetts Boston a minority-serving institution. The grants will support strengthening linkages with universities in Africa, including support for developing new study abroad programs on the continent. BU currently has programs in Zanzibar and Morocco, with plans underway to begin a new program in Ghana in 2016. The BU African Outreach Program is one of the largest and best-respected offices supporting the inclusion of African content in K-12 education. The new grant will allow the development of new Africa-focused teaching materials and an expansion of teacher training activities.
The FLAS grant allows the African Studies Center to offer fellowships to exceptional undergraduate and graduate students taking African language and area studies courses. The grant also supports summer language study, including opportunities for advanced students to do intensive language study in Africa.