In addition to the university fellowships, competitive fellowships are available to current students from a number of sources including the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships and Provost Diversity Fellowships.

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Cornell’s South Asia Program and Southeast Asia Program highly competitive grants, allowing them to offer Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships to Cornell graduate students. These FLAS fellowships support training in South and Southeast Asian languages and a fuller understanding of the areas, regions, or countries in which those languages are commonly used.

Academic-year awards provide a nine-month stipend and a tuition allowance. Ph.D. and research master’s students who receive FLAS awards usually also receive a stipend supplement to bring the award to the nine-month assistantship minimum and tuition supplementation, along with individual Cornell Student Health Insurance (SHP).

Languages

South Asia: Bengali, Hindi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi, Sinhala, Tamil, Modern Tibetan, Urdu

Southeast Asia: Burmese, Khmer (Cambodian), Indonesian/Malay, Filipino (Tagalog), Thai, Vietnamese

Eligibility

Only U.S. citizens and permanent residents are eligible to receive these grants, due to U. S. Department of Education regulations. During the academic-year fellowships, students must enroll in one foreign language and one area studies course each semester.

How to Apply

The initial deadline is in February or March each year. Further information is available through the Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Provost Diversity Fellowship for Advanced Doctoral Students

The Provost Diversity Fellowship is a competitive one‐term (fall, spring, or summer) dissertation completion fellowship designed to advance the Graduate School’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and especially access. It is available to domestic advanced Ph.D. students who are U.S. citizens, permanent residents, Indigenous peoples of Canada eligible to register as domestic students under the Jay Treaty, or students holding DACA, TPS, refugee, or asylee status who have made significant contributions to Cornell’s core value to provide a community of inclusion, belonging, and respect where scholars representing diverse backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences can learn and work productively and positively together and/or have successfully navigated significant barriers to accessing graduate education. 

Eligibility

To be eligible for an award, nominees must have received at least one year of support (e.g. assistantship, training grant, etc.) from their graduate field. Priority consideration for the Provost Diversity Fellowships will be given to students who meet all of the following conditions:

1. Enrolled in a Cornell doctoral program for a minimum of three years by the time of nomination;
2. Will have passed the A exam prior to the award period for the fellowship; and
3. Expect to complete all requirements for the doctorate within three terms (spring, summer, or fall) from the semester of nomination.

Submission Guidelines

A complete nomination consists of three separate Qualtrics survey submissions (note nomination forms go live in late August):

1. Student Application Form: Includes submission of
   • A personal statement of no more than 500 words providing insight into your contributions to supporting Cornell’s Core Value to provide community of inclusion, belonging, and respect where individuals representing diverse backgrounds, perspectives, abilities, and experiences have the opportunity to learn and work productively and positively together. 
     • Within the Personal Statement, applicants may also include relevant information on any of the following:
       • How their personal, academic, and/or professional experiences demonstrate their ability to be both persistent and resilient especially when navigating challenging circumstances.
       • If relevant, how their research interests focus on issues related to diversity, inclusion, access, inequality, and/or equity.
       • Details on their service and/or leadership in efforts to advance diversity, inclusion, access, and equity especially for those from backgrounds historically underrepresented and/or marginalized.
       • Additional context on any significant barriers they have navigated through their progression toward doctoral degree completion.
     • Within the personal statement, applicants should also provide details of lessons learned from any of their lived experiences including but not limited to
       • being a first-generation college graduate (no parent/guardian completed a baccalaureate degree)
       • racial, ethnic, and/or cultural background(s)
       • managing a disability or chronic health condition
       • experiencing housing, food, economic, and/or other forms of significant insecurity
       • being a solo parent
       • gender identity and/or sexual orientation 
       • having served in the military
       • holding DACA, refugee, TPS, or asylee status
   • A dissertation completion plan, including a timeline for work to be completed, developed in collaboration with the nominee’s committee chair. 
2. Committee Chair Nomination Form: Includes confirmation of the committee chair’s approval of the dissertation completion plan submitted by the nominee and the submission of a letter of nomination that includes a mentoring and funding plan detailing how the committee chair will support the nominee through the successful completion of their doctorate and help them access postgraduate opportunities. The letter should also include a funding plan detailing how the nominee has been funded to date and how they will be funded through completion if the fellowship is not awarded. The mentoring plan may be informed by the FAIM Mentoring in Graduate Education content provided via the FAIM (Faculty Advancing Inclusive Mentoring) Resource Center. 
3. Director of Graduate Study (DGS) Nomination Form: Includes confirmation of review and approval of the dissertation completion plan submitted by the student nominee and the mentoring and funding plan submitted by the committee chair.

Nomination Deadline

All nomination forms from the student, committee chair, and DGS must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. on October 7. (If the application deadline falls on a holiday or weekend, applications will be due the next business day.) Fellowship award decisions will be announced by early November.