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Peoples on the Periphery: Advancing Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin and other Austin Institutions of Higher Education Proposed Programs: 1) Course Development: Develop a minimum of six new courses within five disciplines at

University of Texas in order to enhance student exposure to the Geography, History, Political Science, Sociology and Literature connected to Central Asia, the Caucuses, Siberia and the Balkans. . Through a dedicated web page, all new and existing course syllabi will be accessible to our partner institutions. On the same project web site, we will advertise opportunities for guest lecturing, public speakers, and other outreach activities to institutions in the Greater Austin area.

2) Study abroad: Develop new study abroad opportunities at UT and interested associated

institutions in Eurasia and Eastern Europe with a focus on the language acquisition and contact with the cultures of Central Asia, the Caucuses, Siberia, and the Balkans to be held on the University of Texas, Austin campus and made open to the public. Make such opportunities available to students at partner institutions.

3) Speaker Series: Organize a speaker series focusing on the history, culture and

contemporary issues surrounding the peripheral regions of the former Soviet Union and the Balkans. Coordinate the hosting of scholars and students from the region – who are already at UT -- for the purposes of local exposure to the cultures and issues of these areas. Make these speakers and visiting scholar available to partner institutions for invited talks or panels.

4) Language Development: Coordinate the teaching of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian and

Albanian at UT on a regular basis, while developing on-line technologies for language acquisition. Make these technologies, as well as lecturers in any of the languages of our region available to partner institutions.

5) Outreach: the University of Texas will use USIFL funds to expand familiarity with the

region among K-12 instructors, and provided enhance the dissemination of regional content through existing outreach networks

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1. Plan of Operation Page 3

a. Project Overview 3

b. Project Management 6

c. Proposed Program Elements 7

d. Objectives of the Proposed Activities and their Relation to the Purpose of USIFL Program 16

2. Quality of Key Personnel Page 18 3. Budget and Cost Effectiveness Page 21 4. Measurement and Evaluation Page 24 5. Adequacy of Resources Page 28 6. Institutional Commitment to Area Studies Page 29 7. Elements of the Proposed International Studies Program Page 32 8. Expected Results of Proposed Program Page 33 9. Competition Program Priorities Page 35 10. Miscellaneous Requirements Page 35

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1. Plan of Operation:

a. Project Overview

The Cold War is over, but the regions of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe continue to

be geopolitically relevant regions. This is especially true of the ethnically complex, historically

misunderstood, and geopolitically strategic periphery—namely the Balkans, the Caucuses,

Siberia, and Central Asia. With the common privileging of Russian Studies, the small nations,

and particularly the large Muslim populations, that skirt the Slavic world have remained

understudied. Yet the importance of these sub-regions is clear. The Balkan Peninsula, for

example, has been host to a series of recent wars, uncertain settlements, and painful transitions

from communism to democracy and capitalism. Meanwhile just across the porous border of

Central Asia, the US has been embroiled in war in Afghanistan for over 10 years. Central Asia

itself is witnessing a rising tide of political Islam, and internal political turmoil with the major

countries yet to tackle upcoming regime transition as the post-communist leadership ages. The

Caucuses, too, are host to ethnic violence, and territorial disputes including the most recent

Russian-Georgian War of 2008. Siberia is also ethnically complex as well as recourse-rich, with

enormous stores of oil, a critical global resource. It is also a potential geopolitical battlefield of

the future, with China, Japan and Russia all in close proximity and in need of its natural

resources.

The University of Texas based Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies

(CREEES) recognizes the critical need for expertise on these regions, as well as growing student

interest. CREEES proposes to use USIFL funds to direct research, teaching, programming and

outreach efforts toward building a greater understanding and broadly disseminating knowledge

about these peripheral regions. We hope to measurably strengthen our Balkan and Central Asian

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language offerings, improve and expand existing curriculum and increase enrollments in courses

related to these shelterbelts belts of cultural contact and geopolitical interests.

In addition to enhancing our existing program, we plan to develop a network of partner

institutions –The Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia Partnership of Austin (REEEPA)–with a

number of smaller schools in the Austin area. These include Austin Community College,

Huston-Tillotson (a historically black college), Southwestern University and St. Edwards

University. These universities also have a very diverse and multi-cultural student population and

will allow CREEES to reach a varied population of students not only within the UT student

community, but across the Texas region. With UT Austin as the central organizational

institution, this range of smaller schools will gain access to our existing expertise, research

holdings, networks, and stream of visiting specialists, while participating as active partners in the

development of this initiative.

The Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) at the University

of Texas (UT) has been coordinating interdisciplinary research and teaching on our region of

study for more than two decades. We have directed a major as well as an MA program and a

National Resource Center with the help of the Title VI grant from 1988-2010. As others in

higher education, we are challenged by the general atmosphere of fiscal crisis, exacerbated by

the recent loss of Title VI funding. We are meeting these challenges by making every effort to

enhance efficacy, , embarking on a variety of fund-raising initiatives, and re-tooling our

undergraduate programming in line with current global issues and strategic priorities. Through

optimizing already existing institutional strengths here at the University of Texas at Austin, we

hope to strategically employ USIFL funds to invigorate and expand a sustainable undergraduate

language and area studies program that better covers the critically important Eurasian periphery.

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Ultimately we hope to bring a greater awareness of central social political and economic issues

from Eastern Europe and Eurasia to the student body of one of the largest Universities in the

United States, located in the heart of the second most populous and second most prosperous (in

terms of GDP) state in the Union.

Our partnership institutional framework provides a vehicle through which UT can

strengthen ties and share resources with a number of post-secondary institutions in Austin. These

institutions, namely Austin Community College, Huston-Tillotson, St. Edwards University and

Southwestern University, will benefit through expanded relationship with UT and access to

course development and speaker series funded by the UISFL grant. Because these institutions are

relatively small, or in the case of Austin Community college diffused over a large area,

curriculum is quite limited. Through building a partnership relationship with the University of

Texas, these institutions will be able to internationalize their curriculum, have direct and

institutionalized access to UT speakers and events, and develop close ties with the UT

intellectual community.

At present, there exists little collaboration among these institutions of higher learning, in

spite of their geographic concentration. The close proximity of all partners enables us to work

together efficiently, optimizing resources, co-hosting visiting speakers, holding joint faculty

meetings and workshops, and sharing syllabi. Within our partnership, CREEES graduate students

will play an important role, making e themselves available for outreach activities and for

teaching courses at other partner institutions. Materials and partnership interaction will also be

facilitated by a specially constructed website where materials, information, and links can be

posted, and discussions can be fostered through an embedded discussion board. Through the

framework of the partnership intellectual flows between the UT flagship and these smaller

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satellite institutions can become regularized and fruitful for both parties. As a result USIFL

funds will facilitate UT’s advancement of an already excellent program, while allowing partners

to develop a more diverse and globally relevant curriculum.

CREEES and its partners will ensure that equal access and treatment of racial and ethnic

miniorites, women, handicapped persons and the elderly is provided. CREEES will follow

University of Texas’ stringent requirements as to this issue. University of Texas is well known

for its diversity and we greatly pride ourselves on this fact. UT awards more PhDs to Hispanic

students than any other university in the U.S. and ranks 16th in awarding advanced degrees to

African-Americans. As such, we feel that our reputation is the best guarantee that we will not

only continue the University-wide approach to diversity, but make it the core principle behind

our efforts to reach out to a wide audience. We will specifically make sure that on every one of

our calls for grant funding application and on all course descriptions that it is clearly illustrated

that we intend to pursue a diverse pool of applicants.

b. Project Management

This project will be administered through the existing administrative infrastructure of the Center

for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) at the University of Texas. The

current director of CREEES, Mary Neuburger, will be the principal investigator and Director of

the project, working closely with The UT advisory committee, that will coordinate and assess the

project as a whole. This will consist of CREEES faculty members with academic training and

affiliations in five disciplines; Mary Neuburger (history), Bella Jordan (geography), Robert

Moser (government), Cynthia Buckley (sociology), Michael Pesenson (Slavic Languages) and

Tatiana Kuzmic (Slavic Languages). Representatives from the five-person UT committee will

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meet once a semester to report outcomes and discuss issues related to the project. They will seek

and gather input from faculty and undergraduate majors on programming and new courses and

closely monitor enrollments and student satisfaction rates in new courses. More pointedly they

will assure that we are moving towards and achieving UT’s stated project objectives.

In addition, there will be project directors and three-person advisory committees at the

four affiliated institutions of the REEEPA, charged with making decisions about how best to use

CREEES expertise to benefit all members of the partnership. The identified point people from

theses institutions are as follows: Michael Hirsch (sociology), Huston-Tilitson; Patricia Perry

(history), St. Edwards University; Marlette Rebhorn (history), Austin Community College;

Melissa Byrnes (history), Southwestern University. Representatives from the five-person UT

committee and the four satellite REEEPA committees will meet once a semester to report

outcomes and discuss issues related to the project. We will specifically want to involve our

partner institutions in curriculum development and also give them access to any foreign

experts/academics invited to Austin.

This project will encourage participation in project management from underrepresented

groups (e.g. members of racial and ethnic minority groups, women, handicapped persons, and the

elderly) by clearly stating on every call for course development funding that we encourage

applicants from underrepresented groups.

c. Proposed Program Elements

This project has four clearly defined and achievable objectives, which clearly serve the central

objectives of this program.

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I. Course Development: CREEES at UT proposes to develop six new courses (3 per year)

within 6 targeted disciplines that will enhance student exposure to the geography, history,

politics, sociology, history and literature of Central Asia, the Caucuses, and the Balkans. Each

year course development proposals will be solicited from CREEES partners and the wider UT

community with the guidelines and focus of the grant in mind. Beginning in the fall of 2011,

three course proposals will be chosen by the CREEES/USIFL advisory committee to be

developed over the following summer, with the commitment to teach the courses as soon as

scheduling allows and for them to be offered on a regular basis, at least ever-other year for the

next six years (or at least three times). Team taught courses – with multiple professors/lecturers

taking on the burden sharing of developing the curriculum and executing the lectures -- will be

particularly encouraged so that CREEES can continue to act as a curricular, interdisciplinary

bridge within the University. CREEES will especially welcome and encourage submissions

from members of racial and ethnic minorities, women, handicapped persons, and the elderly. In

addition, the committee will look with favor upon courses that meet the standards and needs of

the recently developed Global Studies/International Relations (GS/IR) or that link to Maymester

or other study abroad projects. The GS/IR major, which already has attracted some 400 majors,

can serve as an important conduit for bringing students into our area studies classes and engaging

them in the issues and eventually languages of our region, our language courses, our minor and

our major.

While the specific courses to be developed will need to be approved by the advisory

committee, numerous faculty have already expressed interest in extended their teaching

repertoires in this direction. Bella Jordon, for example, whose specialty is geography of the

former Soviet Union has informally proposed two new courses, “Geography of Central Asia and

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Afghanistan,” and Geography of the Caucuses and Iran.” These new courses promise to provide

students will in-depth knowledge of these two strategic and unstable regions, while also

providing a geographic-curricular bridge to the Middle East. CREEES is committed to working

together with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, another UT area studies program, to provide

coverage of this region that clarifies such connections, while explaining geo-political and

historical ruptures.

Other possible new courses are, “Islam in the Balkans: From Coexistence to Conflict,”

(Mary Neuburger, History); “From Plato to Pamuk: Identity through Balkan Literature,” (Tatiana

Kuzmic, Slavic Literature); “Ethnic Politics in the Former Soviet Union,” (Rob Moser,

government); “From Russian to Soviet Empire: History on the Periphery (Charters Wynn,

History); “Russia’s Orient: the Russian Periphery in Literature and Film,” (Michael Pesenson:

Slavic Languages); Demographic Change and Social Stability in Eurasia’s Border Regions

(Cynthia Buckley, Sociology). All possible courses will be vetted, discussed and approved for

development, three a year for the two years of the grant. The teaching of such courses at UT will

fulfill student demand for more courses on Former Soviet Union studies, as recently gathered

through an email poll of undergraduate majors, and will greatly round out and refresh our current

curricular offerings.

Partnership members will also be encouraged to develop courses related to the Russian,

Eastern Europe region or expand existing courses to cover parts of our region. UT faculty will

offer specific suggestions as well as tailored training workshops for advancing expertise and

coverage of our area at these institutions. Partnership members will also be provided with a list

of available lecturers, scholars in residence, recent graduates, and advanced graduate students

who are available to teach courses on a contract basis or who can act as visiting lecturers free of

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charge. These courses will also pique their interest in our region, and at least from Austin

Community College, the largest of these institutions, provide conduits of students into our major

when they transfer into UT.

Newly developed UT syllabi will be made available, not only to partnership members,

but through REENIC (http://reenic.utexas.edu/) —Russian and East European Network

Information Center to our wider outreach networks. Through REENIC this curricular

development can reach a wider K-12 audience.

II. Study abroad: One of the priorities of the project is the creation of new study abroad

opportunities through the UT study abroad office (http://www.utexas.edu/student/abroad/).

Currently, we have numerous study abroad opportunities in Russia, Czech Republic and Poland,

but none in the Balkans, Central Asia or the Caucuses. With USIFL funds UT faculty will be

directly involved in developing at least two new study abroad programs in these discreet regions,

one each year. The CREEES-USIFL advisory committee will evaluate the merit of the proposals

and allot travel funds for a site visit and institutional ties to be solidified for specific programs.

In the fall of year one, a workshop will be held in which interested faculty will talk about the

merit of existing programs and the logistics and desirability of developing new programs.

CREEES affiliates will then be encouraged to submit proposals for study abroad programs, either

on the semester, summer or Maymester study-abroad models. The later entails a course taken in

the spring semester at UT on a very specific topic and then a 5-week trip, accompanied by a UT

faculty to a designated place connected the spring course. Currently the only Maymester program

on our region is a photography workshop in Prague, and a newly developed Jewish Studies

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Maymester, also in Prague. With the incentive of USIFL funds for faculty course and program

development, we hope to plan at least one more Maymester program to the region.

As an example, Dr. Bella Jordan has expressed interest in developing a Maymester

program to Baku, Azerbaijan. This program would require interested students to take her new

course, pending approval by the UT-USIFL committee, entitled “Geography of the Caucuses and

Iran.” This course will provide students with a semester-long in-depth exploration of the

incredibly complex cultural landscape of the region, including cross-border cultures, like the

Azeris that spill into Iran. This course will be followed by a five week trip to Baku that would

provide students with an intimate look at the culture, history, geography, and even an

introduction to the language of Azerbaijan. As a geographer of material culture, Dr. Jordan is

the ideal candidate to explore with UT students the cultural artifacts that mark the landscape of

the region. This kind of hands on teaching is ideal for the Maymester teaching-study abroad

format. And in part, this focus on Azerbaijan is in response to feelers put out by the Azerbaijani

consulate in Los Angeles, Elin Suleymenov, who came to Austin and requested a meeting with

CREEES faculty. Suleymenov has put us in touch with people at Khazar University, a private

and English speaking institution in Baku that would provide a perfect context for housing and

instruction of Maymester students. In addition, not only do oil ties make Texas and Azerbaijan

natural partners for future exchanges and cooperation, but Azerbaijan is an exceedingly pro-

American Islamic country, where American students will be safe and welcome. Baku is located

on the stunning Caspian Sea in a beautiful mountainous region that will be attractive and

fascinating to UT students.

Dr. Mary Neuburger is proposing a similar study abroad program to Ohrid, Macedonia.

Interested students would take her proposed newly developed spring course, “Islam in the

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Balkans: From Coexistence to Conflict,” and then visit the Macedonian town of Ohrid for five

weeks. This beautiful town on the stunning lake Ohrid, has cultural monuments from as far back

as the byzantine era. This program will be developed in close cooperation with the University of

Clement Ohridski in Skopje, that hosts summer programs in Ohrid. In the heart of the Eastern

Balkans, this is an extremely ethnically diverse part of Macedonia with large Macedonian,

Albanian, and Roma populations—Christians and Muslims. There are a range of monuments,

markets, diverse towns, and other possibilities for students to experience the region. In addition,

UT has contacts with the nearby University of Tetovo, in adjacent the Albanian region of

Macedonia, namely Ali Musliu who works on International Law and Human Albanians are

currently one third of the Macedonian population and the “Albanian question,” would be a major

theme of the Maymester course and program. This is officious considering our focus on offering

the Albanian language at the University of Texas, described below.

In addition to these potential Maymester programs, semester abroad and summer

programs will be revived in Croatia (also part of the Balkans), that will be beneficial to the

development of our Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian program, also described below. CREEES plans

on keeping all affiliates abreast of study abroad programs and actively recruiting students to

make such programs a success.

The study abroad priorities and needs of partnership members will also be discussed and

assed at advisory committee meetings. Certain programs developed by UT could be made

available to students from partnership members, and information about other third party

importunities can be circulated on the REEEPA listserve. relevant institutions.

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III. Language Development: In tandem with new study abroad and curricular opportunities,

CREEES also plans on deepening its offerings of critical languages, particularly from our

peripheral focus areas. The top priority in this regard will be the devotion of instructional funds

to the teaching of Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian (SBC) and Albanian on a regular basis. Currently

SBC is offered at the first and second year levels on alternating years. Lecturer funds will

support its teaching on the third and fourth year level. Similarly Albanian will be offered on a

regular basis on the first and second year level by a qualified Albanian assistant instructor. In

addition, coordinating efforts with Middle Eastern Studies, we hope to ensure that Central Asian

language and Caucasian languages are intermittently taught. In particular we will be pursing an

Azeri scholar to offer Azeri in conjunction with our Maymester program. Indeed, study abroad

opportunities should bolster language-learning efforts through immersion.

In conjunction with these efforts, we plan to develop on-line technologies for language

acquisition on various levels for SBC, Albanian, Uzbek, and Azeri through the UT Center for

Language technology. Working with the Texas Language Center and the Texas language

technology center, we hope to work with new methods of streamline language learning. These

methods, as well as UT instructors will be made available, according to demand, to partnership

members as well as our wider outreach networks.

IV. Program and Outreach Development: As part of our larger mission of developing and

enhancing our areas studies program, USIFL funds will be used to fund a speaker series at the

University of Texas focusing on the history, culture and contemporary issues surrounding the

Balkans and the peripheral regions of the former Soviet Union. This series will be multi-

disciplinary and will draw on interests and resources on campus, so that events can be co-

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sponsored and broadly interesting to departments and other area studies centers. We have

already cultivated a synergistic relationship with the Center for Middle East Studies, and will call

on them to co-sponsor visiting speakers on Central Asia and the Caucuses. Likewise, we will

cooperate with the Center for European Studies to fund speakers on the Balkans. Finally we will

work with departments like the School Rappaport Center for Human Rights, and the Center for

Women and Gender Studies human rights research cluster to co-sponsor events related to human

rights in the regions we are focusing on. This series will create visibility for our Center that will

help in drawing more majors, linking faculty and students across disciplines, while

internationalizing campus curricular and extra-curricular offerings.

Information on the speaker series will be open to the public and distributed regularly

through outreach networks to the Austin community and partnership institutions in Austin.

Partnership members will get information on speaker and events at the planning stage, so that

arrangements can be made for select speakers, to give talks at their institutions. This

arrangement will allow partnership members access to visiting lectures at very little cost, while

maximizing impact of visiting scholars.

In conjunction with such efforts, and in the interest of maximizing resources, UT will

continue to coordinate the hosting of scholars and students from various parts of the region we

study. Over the years, UT had hosted a number of visiting scholars from the region, and has

increased such efforts in the past year. This year alone, are hosting a Czech scholar from Prague

and a Russian delegation though the Open World program. More apropos to our proposed

USIFL project, we are also hosting two visiting Albanian scholars this spring (2011) through the

state department supported Junior Fellow Development Program. Artan Hoxha a historian from

the University of Tirana (the capital of Albania) and Ali Musliu, a human rights Law scholar and

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an ethnic Albanian from the University of Tetovo Macedonia are currently in residence at UT.

These visits will be instrumental in solidifying UT’s institutional ties to Albania and Macedonia.

Both scholars will bring their expertise to our campus through talks, panels and participation in

the Institute for Historical Studies and the Rappaport Center for Human rights respectively. Over

the coming years, we plan to host two scholars a year through this US government program that

focuses specifically on the strategic sub-regions that we have included in our USIFL program,

namely the Balkans, Caucuses and Central Asia. Along these same lines, we are currently

negotiating to bring a Fulbright core scholar from Uzbekistan, Dilnora Abidjanova, with a

specialty on gender and political Islam for the 2011-12 academic year. In addition, we are

hosting an Open World delegation from Tajikistan for the fall of 2011 with a theme of “social

issues.” Like the Russian delegation this spring, the Tajiks will be available for an on-campus

panel discussion and networking with our faculty and students. We will also be hosting two

Foreign Language Teaching Assistants (FLTA’s) through the Fulbright program, one from

Uzbekistan and one from Tajikistan, who will be offering instruction in their native languages to

our students next year. These visiting scholar programs will greatly enhance our ability to teach

language and content courses on the region, while making the expertise of these visitors

available to our existing faculty. Rotating disciplines and regions, we hope to bring the people of

our region to us.

We can also make such scholars readily available to our institutional partners. At limited

cost to our program, these scholars who are in residence for longer periods of time will be able to

make appearances at interested institutions alone or in coordinated panels to speak on topics of

expertise. Programming efforts, then, with USIFL and supporting funds will be intimately ties to

our outreach program, which is already finely tuned. USIFL funds will not only help us continue

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our highly rated work in this area, but expand our networks beyond K-12 and through the

partnership arrangement, to a constellation of small colleges and Universities in Austin. Most of

these schools have slim to no offerings in our region, and can be major beneficiaries of outreach

efforts. The efficiencies gained through our partnership will significantly strengthen the impact

of funds provided through Fulbright and other initiatives.

While we currently make available web-based curriculum modules for K-12 through

taking part in the global Hemispheres program (http://www.utexas.edu/student/abroad/), no such

materials are made available to local colleges and universities. We plan to expand our language

and content-based curricular modules for Hemispheres and Central Texas schools. At the same

time, we hope to broaden the scope of existing campus events, like “Explore UT,” and “Russia

Day,” by presenting a fuller picture of Eurasian cultures that exist within and beyond the current

borders of Russia. All told, USIFL funds will provide CREEES with the ability to both expand

out expertise in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Caucuses, but to broadly disseminate such

knowledge though programming and outreach efforts that extends beyond the UT community to

our partnership partners, greater Austin and K-12 schools across the state.

d. Objectives of the Proposed Activities and their Relation to the Purpose of USIFL

Program: We plan to use a significant amount of USIFL funds to ensure the teaching of

two/four critical languages in the program priority, namely Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian—which

will be taught jointly—and Albanian, which is taught on almost no institutions in the United

States. These two/four languages are the most critical languages in understanding the conflict

and resolution issues in the former Yugoslavia. Given the significant and growing Albanian

community in Texas, we hope to grow into a major center for Albanian studies in the United

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States. Given the critical nature of the Albanian question for Balkan studies (and Balkan

stability) we plan to fill a critical hole in US expertise in this area. Using USIFL funds we hope

to get this program underway as we continue to raise other funds to develop out Balkan Studies

program more broadly. Currently UT has four specialists on the Balkan region, Mary Neuburger

(history), Alan Kuperman (LBJ School of Public Affairs), Tatiana Kuzmic (Slavic Languages

and Literature), and Sonia Seeman (Ethno-musicology). Between these core faculty and Ian

Hancock (a specialist on Roma), UT has the potential to develop into an important center for

Balkan studies. We hope the USIFL can help us better develop the language and curriculum in

Balkan Studies and to build the kind of disciplinary bridges for such a program to better cohere.

As far as Central Asia and the Caucuses are concerned, these regions and language are

also critical priorities for the State department and Department of Education. There is broad

interest in these areas across campus, among faculty as well as students. In terms of faculty, UT

currently has three scholars who are actively engaged in teaching and research on these regions:

Cynthia Buckley (Sociology), Bella Jordan (Geography), Michael Hillman (Middle Eastern

Studies). They are complemented by numerous scholars of Russia in government, literature, and

history who are interested and knowledgeable in these regions, and well qualified to develop

courses. As with the Balkan region, we intend to both greatly hone and focus our curricular

offerings on this region, while supplementing our own expertise with visiting scholars from the

region and a lively and informative speaker series. We are currently working with Middle East

Studies and other interested departments to lobby for another permanent hire in Central Asia. In

spite of current budgetary concerns, the Dean of Liberal Arts has expressed interest and we will

continue to pursue the possibility of an open-discipline permanent hire on the region.

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Ultimately we hope to expand the existing base of experts on these strategic peripheral

zones of our larger region, by sparking and expanding interest at UT and among REEEPA-TX

affiliates, and by providing concrete encounters with the peoples, languages, and cultures of our

region, here in Central Texas and abroad. Through Hemispheres, our own teacher workshops

and by encouraging students to join the U-Teach program (http://uteachweb.cns.utexas.edu/)

during the next four years we will seek to increase the international background and knowledge

of future teachers and encourage our own students to consider K-12 teaching as a potential

career. Through these and other efforts, CREEES seeks to serve the professional development

needs of our students, and the strategic needs of all sectors of the US and international labor

markets. CREEES activities will enhance the regional knowledge of current and future

instructors at the primary, secondary and post-secondary level in order to internationalize

curriculum. Focusing on underserved and minority schools, our outreach program seeks to bring

diversity into the study of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. Our training goals will be served

by increased focus on monitoring language development and area expertise among our students,

expanding our course offerings, emphasizing research skills, reevaluating core curriculum

approaches, enhancing our digital learning approaches and building additional opportunities for

intensive language study, with a particular focus on the Islamic worlds within our area of study.

2. Quality of Key Personnel: There are a number of key personnel whose qualifications will

make the success of this program a reality. Most importantly, Dr. Mary Neuburger, Associate

Professor History, with be the program director for the grant. Mary Neuburger is currently the

Director for the Center for Russian, East, European and Eurasian Studies at the University of

Texas, where she has taught since 1997. Neuburger received her Phd in History at the University

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of Washington in 1997, with a specialty in Modern Balkan History. With language proficiency

in Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Turkish as well as Russian, Neuburger has been travelling to the

Balkans almost years since 1993 and has a well-developed knowledge of the people and cultures

of the region. Her monograph The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of

Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria was published with Cornell Press in 2004. Her second book

Inhaling Modernity: The Social Life of Tobacco in Modern Bulgaria, in currently under review

at Cornell Press, and she will come up for promotion to full professor no later than the fall 2012.

Neuburger has also published a large range of articles on the Balkans and is co-editing a book

that is forthcoming with Oxford Press, Communism Unwrapped: Cultures of Consumption in

Postwar Eastern Europe. Her scholarly visibility in the field is well-established and her

organizational abilities are excellent. She has organized numerous conference and symposia,

most recently the Cold War Cultures conference at UT in the fall of 2010. Her roles as Director

of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies makes her well positioned

institutionally to make expansion of the undergraduate program and active cooperation with

partnership members a reality. Dr. Neuburger will dedicate 10 hours a week to directing the

UISFL project from her position as the CREES director.

Other UT faculty members will bring valuable expertise, regional connections, and

teaching and research prowess to the project. Dr. Bella Jordan, for example, has a PhD in

geography from the University of Texas with a specialty in the former Soviet Union. She is a

native of Siberia and has lived and travelled extensively throughout the former Soviet Union,

where she has numerous contacts. . Dr. Cynthia Buckley has a PhD in sociology from the

University of Michigan. A social demographer, she has traveled extensively throughout the

Caucasus and Central Asia, serving as a consutlant for the World Health Organization, the

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Armenian Academy of Science, the Caucasus Research Resource Centers, and the U.S. State

Department. Her published research on the region covers issues of popluation aging, public

health, and migration. A member of the Obama-Medvedev C2C Committee on Higher

Education, she has contacts across the region as well as in granting institutions across the US.

The core faculty will provide guidance and coherence to the retooling of UTs undergraduate

program, and assume an advisory role in partnership coordination. The will dedicate about 5

hours a week to the coordination activities – increasing their activity during weeks when

meetings or grant evaluation is conducted – in addition to time spent teaching courses on the

region, some of which will be funded by the UISFL program.

Dr. Robert Moser is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and an associate professor

of political science at UT, specializing in the study of electoral systems, political parties, and

Russian politics, including voting patterns and political behaviors of minority populations in

Russia and the former Eastern Bloc. He too has travelled extensively in the region and has

contacts as well as expertise in Russia and its periphery. His book manuscript on electoral

systems (co-autherd with Ethan Scheiner from UC Davis) is currently under review at

Cambridge University Press. He also has research interest in the study of Islam, particularly in

the context of the Former Soviet Union.Dr. Cindy Buckley has a PhD in sociology form the

University of Michigan. Her specialty is in aging, public health, and migration in Central Asia

and the Caucuses, and she has contacts across the region as well as in granting institutions across

the US. These core faculty will provide guidance and coherence to the retooling of UTs

undergraduate program, while assuming an advisory role in partnership coordination. The will

dedicate about 5 hours a week to the coordination activities – increasing their activity during

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weeks when meetings or grant evaluation is conducted -- not including time spent teaching

courses funded by the UISFL program.

The University of Texas at Austin has very strong reputation and track record in hiring

members of racial and ethnic minority groups, women, handicapped persons, and the elderly.

Our very own advisory committee will have representation of three women (out of five

members) and one member of Yakut Siberian tribe.

Partnership members, not surprisingly, are lacking in experts on the region in question.

They do, however, have well-qualified faculty members in relevant disciplines who can make

sound decisions about how to best use the opportunities offered by the partnership with

CREEES.

3. Budget and Cost Effectiveness: CREEES at the University of Texas in cooperation and our

REEEPA-TX partners plan to use USIFL in the most cost-effective ways possible. Instructional

funds will be used to pay lecturers, who tend to be more cost effective than tenure track faculty

and all travel will be planned in advance for discounted state rates, and spare accommodations.

Existing institutional structures will be largely used to staff the project at CREEES, therefore no

funding will be used to support administrative staff.

As outlined above CREEES will draw upon existing relationships across campus to

subsidize the speaker series and other programming initiatives with co-sponsorships from the

well-funded Center for Middle East Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for

Woman and Gender Studies, the Rappaport Center for Human rights and various discipline-

based departments – history, sociology, government, Slavic Languages, etc. In addition, we will

continue to actively pursue host relationships with federally funded programs like Fulbright,

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Junior Faculty Development Program, and Open World to bolster our programming at minimal

cost. Finally, we are actively seeking to build this program through other funding sources,

private, foundational, and corporate so that we can build a sustainable program on a firm

foundation of endowments. All of these initiatives, we hope will make us competitive for a

variety of grants and other funding courses as we move into the future.

Budget breakdown:

Year 1

Objective I: Course Development (Total $31,000)

$15,000 for Course Development of 3 courses

$1,000 for training workshop at the beginning of the year to help with course development in

partner institutions.

$15,000 for Lecturer on content course for Balkans or Caucuses or Central Asia.

Objective II: Study Abroad (Total $21,000)

$1,000 for coordinating workshop at the beginning of the year to help with study abroad

development

$10,000 for Study Abroad program development for programs to Baku, Azerbaijan and Ohrid,

Macedonia.

$10,000 scholarship travel money to be distributed to 4 candidates to the study abroad programs

designed via the funding.

Objective III: Language development (Total $30,000)

$15,000 for a third-fourth year lecturer for Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian

$15,000 for a lecturer for Albanian

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Objective IV: Program and Outreach Development ($15,000)

$8,000 for a yearlong speaker series

$7,000 for developing a specific “Curriculum Unit”

(http://www.utexas.edu/cola/orgs/hemispheres/curriculum/curriculum.php) that fits within the

grant objectives (study of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian cultures and politics) within

the UT Hemispheres program which provides K-12 with curriculum ideas, planning and

materials.

Miscellaneous ($2,000):

$200 – honorarium for Dr. Gale Stokes, professor emeritus at Rice University who will take on

the role of external evaluator in this project.

$1,800 – Annual meeting of Title VI project directors.

Year 2

Objective I: Course Development (Total $31,000)

$15,000 for Course Development of 3 courses

$ 1,000 for training workshop at the beginning of the year to help with course development in

partner institutions.

$15,000 for Lecturer on content course for Balkans or Caucuses or Central Asia.

Objective II: Study Abroad (Total $21,000)

$1,000 for coordinating workshop at the beginning of the year to help with study abroad

development

$10,000 for Study Abroad program development for programs to Croatia and Serbia.

$10,000 scholarship travel money to be distributed to 4 candidates to the study abroad programs

designed via the funding (both study abroad designed in Year I and Year II).

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Objective III: Language development (Total $30,000)

$15,000 for a third-fourth year lecturer for Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian

$15,000 for a lecturer for Albanian

Objective IV: Program and Outreach Development ($15,000)

$7,000 for a yearlong speaker series

$8,000 for developing a specific “Curriculum Unit”

(http://www.utexas.edu/cola/orgs/hemispheres/curriculum/curriculum.php) that fits within the

grant objectives (study of Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian cultures and politics) within

the UT Hemispheres program which provides K-12 with curriculum ideas, planning and

materials. This “curriculum unit” will be different from the one established in Year I and would

build on the course curriculum developed in Years I and II.

Miscellaneous ($2,000):

$200 – honorarium for Dr. Gale Stokes, professor emeritus at Rice University who will take on

the role of external evaluator in this project.

$1,800 – Annual meeting of Title VI project directors.

4. Measurements and Evaluation:

Measurable success is very important to our program. With that in mind, the first meeting of the

REEEPA advisory in the fall of 2011 will decide upon and distribute methods and measures of

evaluation to all partnership faculty point people. These decisions will be made in consultation

with an external evaluator, who will then be present at meetings with the evaluative

subcommittee and REEEPA-USIFL advisory committee in the fall of 2012, and 2013.

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The planned criteria to be used to evaluate the results of the project are:

A. Speaker Series Surveys (quantitative): survey will use quantifiable scale to asses

quality and relevance of the speakers, including whether or not they increased interest

of attending students in pursuing language or area study within CREEES.

B. Five-page reports from study-abroad end users (qualitative): students taking the

opportunity of traveling abroad will be required to assess their experiences in a five-

page essay that will be submitted to the advisory committee.

C. Language course student performance (quantative): performance of language course

students will be tracked each year as well as over the two years using their grades to

quantify progress.

D. Language course student surveys (quantitative): surveys using a quantative scale will

be given to students taking language courses to asses the extent to which their interest

in the region was sufficiently peaked via language study and whether the instruction

was sufficiently broad and did not focus solely on language instruction.

E. Course development student surveys (quantatative): surveys using a quantatative

scale will be given to students attending the developed theme courses to asses the

extent to which their interests in the region was sufficiently peaked and whether they

would consider pursuing a career in the discipline.

F. Report from language instructors (qualitative): language instructors will be required

to submit a report assessing their student performance as well as whether CREEES

offered sufficient administrative support for their project.

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G. Report from developed courses (qualitative): lecturers who developed courses will be

asked to submit a report assessing their student performance as well as whether

CREEES offered sufficient administrative support for their project.

H. External evaluator report (qualitative): An external evaluator will collect all the

surveys and evaluation materials, as well as all the reports on developed courses and

their curricula and submit their own assessment of the project.

I. K-12 instructor reports/surveys (qualitative/quantitative): We will ask K-12

instructors who take advantage of our developed Curriculum Units to both write a

report on whether the information and tools were useful and also to take a short

survey on whether CREEES offered sufficient administrative support.

The submitted evaluation will – if possible – be used to continuously improve the administration

of the funding. For example, speaker series surveys will allow the Director to adjust themes and

setting of the speaker series throughout the year since the feedback will be immediate. The more

long term evaluation mechanisms will allow the advisory board to adjust how the funds are

distributed in Year II based on the responses of end-users and of evaluators.

External Evaluator: Gale Stokes, a professor emeritus at Rice University, has agreed to

take on the role of external evaluator in this project. Dr. Stokes will pay an annual visit to UT

during our fall advisory committee meetings. He will be provided with all syllabi, reports,

budgets, exit surveys and other documentation, and will be asked to give his own independent

assessment of the state and outcomes of the project. He will be compensated out of USIFL funds

and will also give an annual talk or participate in a panel event so we can maximize the costs and

benefits of his appearance on campus.

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With that in mind, we hope to expand our OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) examination

of students in critical languages so we can better track their proficiency and progress. In

addition, we plan to carefully track USIFL grant outcomes, requiring summary reports on all

funds used from the end-users, and the presentation of new syllabi, or study abroad program

outlines at biannual meetings of the UT-CREEES and REEEPA-TX advisory committees.

When USIFL-developed new courses are taught enrollments will be counted and tracked

and student evaluations will be carefully analyzed. The advisory committee will look closely at

the success and failure of such courses and in this way the project as a whole, though quantitative

and qualitative information on evaluation sheets –which instructors will be required to provide

copies of. Students who participate in study abroad programs will be required to fill out exit

surveys and report back on the impact, personal and professional of their travel experiences. In

addition, students’ career paths will be tracked through an intensified use of alumni databases

and a facebook page. We already have a system in place, in which all programming and

outreach events will be accompanied by surveys, where audience members are counted and

reactions recorded.

All new courses developed will be presented and syllabi distributed at bi-annual meetings

to partnership committee members. Instructors will be required to speak briefly about the success

of the courses and student evaluations will be available to grant committee members for perusal.

In general, we hope that such curricular development will reinvigorate out undergraduate

program and help us respond to changing demand for global curriculum on UT campus.

More information on evaluation mechanisms is provided in Appendix B.

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5. Adequacy of Resources

The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest educational institutions in the U.S. and the

world. It has world-class facilities, including libraries and lecture halls that will easily be made

available to end users of the grant.

The University of Texas Libraries’ collection of Slavic and Eurasian studies materials

(http://www.lib.utexas.edu/subject/slavic/) comprises approximately 153,000 volumes of books

and journals, 500 titles on microfilm, nearly 300 current serials subscriptions and many more

older holdings, as well as important online resources and CD-ROMs. The collection is spread out

across four campus libraries, including the Perry Castaneda Library which is the 5th largest

library among academic institutions in the U.S., and the eleventh largest library overall in the

country.

CREEES itself has a number of institutional resources that it can call upon in providing

resources for the administration of the grant:

- Speakers Bureau: CREEES maintains speakers bureau of staff, graduate students and

faculty that are available for individual lectures, classroom culture and language

lessons, and consultation.

- REEENIC (http://reenic.utexas.edu/) : The Russian and East European Network

Information Center – is an online virtual library consisting of critically reviewed

links. It is intended as an educational, non-commercial service offered by UT and

CREEES. We will use it to include K-12 instructors interested in our curriculum

development, as well as to include our Austin area partnership institutions in the

execution of the UISFL grant.

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- Audio Library: All past guest presenters and lecturers are recorded, and we will do so

with the UISFL speaker series.

- Video Shorts: Mini lectures by CREEES professors. We will use this resource to

develop mini lectures of the courses we develop with UISFL funding.

- CREEES Listserv (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/creees/listserv/about.php) –

The listserv has a wide membership and it distributes information on lectures by

distinguished faculty and visiting speakers, film and photographic exhibits and

outreach programs for K-12 teachers including a speakers’ bureau list.

- CREEES Newsletter

(http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/creees/newsletter/about.php) - A monthly

publication (in PDF format) that contains a calendar of monthly events, academic

activities at UT, current opportunities, outreach news, REENIC information as well as

new resources acquired by CREEES.

CREEES has a great relationship with a number of fellow area studies institutes and professional

schools. As such we will have further access to a number of facilities, including the LBJ

Presidential Library, which has the highest rate of visitation out of any presidential library in the

country, as well as the recently renovated facilities of the LBJ School of Public Policy.

6. Commitment to Area Studies:

The University of Texas at Austin has a long-time commitment to Area Studies.

With over 50,000 enrolled students in 2009-10, UT is the fifth largest university campus in the

United States and a globally recognized center for research excellence. In spite of its size, UT is

by no means the only educational institution in Austin, which has a web of other post-secondary

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schools. Austin Community College is by far the next largest institution with some 44,000

matriculated and an additional 15,000 non-matriculated students, at its web of campuses in

Austin and the eight counties that skirt the Austin area. ACC is the number one source of

transfer students to UT, but is not well connected to UT institutionally. Huston-Tilitson (HT), is

a small African-American college founded in 1875 that is literally walking distance to UT.

CREEES at UT has begun to forge a relationship to HT over the last two years, which we hope

to greatly strengthen through this partnership arrangement. A short drive away, Southwestern

University (1,300 students) and St. Edwards University (5,293) are similarly small private liberal

arts institutions in the Austin metropolitan area. Our proximity, diversity of opportunities and

resources makes UT an ideal partner for a smaller schools like HT, Southwestern University, St.

Edwards University and the larger but more disperses ACC. Sharing resources and opportunities

through the REEEPA will ensure that USIFL funds are maximized and reach a large web of

institutional actors and, more importantly, students.

UT has a lively and diverse campus, and the administration has a strong commitment to

Global Studies, as coordinated through the various area studies centers across campus. CREEES

is an important part of the structure of area studies centers at UT, which actively collaborate in

various symposia and outreach projects. For example, all of the areas studies centers across

campus co-sponsored a conference this fall on global Cold War Cultures. We also cooperate in

organizing an annual teachers training conference called Hemispheres, which has attracted

national attention. Because our region has significant overlap, we collaborate especially closely

with existing Title VI National Resource Centers on campus, including the Center for Middle

Eastern Studies (CMES), and the newly awarded Title VI Center for European Studies (CES).

CREEES is a truly interdisciplinary body, drawing upon faculty affiliates across seven schools

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and colleges and over 30 departments. We have active ties with the Lyndon B. Johnson School

of Public Policy and the Rappaport Center for Human Rights, associated with the UT law school,

as well as the Business School, Aerospace Engineering and Chemical Engineering (resource

management). Since 2006 our over sixty faculty affiliates have guided 108 students to a B.A. in

CREEES. Our vision, variety, networks, research strength and community place CREEES in a

unique position to make optimal use of USIFL funds, to enhance the undergraduate program at

UT. At the same time, we are enthusiastic about extending our outreach networks into more

institutionalized arrangements with surrounding post-secondary institutions.

USIFL funds will enable this relationship to take root, as it allows institutions in the

REEEPA to internationalize curricula that are by nature more limited in global scope. With

smaller faculties and student bodies, curriculum is necessarily more general with a severely

limited coverage of global regions and issues. Yet these institutions are deeply committed and

interested in having their students exposed to a global range of issues and opportunities. A

closer relationship to the Center for Russian, East, European, and Eurasian Studies can prove just

a first a step in a more effective ways of managing and sharing resources between institutions in

the Austin area. In a period when resources are scarce, such models of efficient use of resources

are more critical than ever.

To support the administration of the UISFL grant, CREEES will dedicate its four member

administrative staff to the execution of grant activities. We have on staff a professional librarian,

program coordinator, administrative associate and REENIC coordinator who will help with the

dissemination of news and information. We also have a graduate advisor, Dr. Keith Livers, who

will help with the integration of the new courses and study abroad programs into the curriculum

of the program. We will also use a number of communication resources – REENIC, CREEES

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listserv and our newsletter – to disseminate information about the UISFL grant, specifically

opportunities for students as well as for faculty interested in developing new courses. We will

continuously stress our commitment to diversity, both in terms of attracting students and

interested faculty.

The true number of international studies courses offered at the entire UT is difficult to

gauge. CREEES alone offers 12 courses any one semester that could be considered “international

studies”. The Government Department in its Spring 2011 semester offered 23. This is not

counting other area studies programs such as the Middle Eastern Studies, Institute of Latin

American Studies (LILAS), Bridging Disciplines Programs – International Studies, Center for

European Studies, Department of Asian Studies, South Asia Institute, Germanic Studies and

other departments or international studies courses in other social science and liberal arts

disciplines. It is safe to say that University of Texas at Austin has literally hundreds of

undergraduate courses in “international studies”.

7. Elements of the Proposed International Studies Program

CREEES has proposed 4 main activities for the execution of the UISFL grant: original courses

development to create six courses, two language course development, study abroad program

development for four locations and outreach to K-12 instructors and to the wider regional

academic community.

These activities will enhance the programs already on offer in University of Texas and CREEES

in particular. However, they will also enhance University’s focus on the Balkans, Caucuses,

Central Asia and wider Former Soviet Union region and therefore allow us to fine tune the

33

academic offer of CREEES, with the goal of one day make the University of Texas at Austin the

U.S. center for Balkan Studies.

Our proposed activities have been endorsed by a number of well established academics in

different fields: history, government, sociology, law, geography and linguistic studies. CREEES

is by definition an interdisciplinary center. Area studies cannot but be studied through different

academic and research prisms and we are committed to executing the grant the way we do all of

our activities: via an interdisciplinary approach. We therefore cannot prejudice any particular

discipline in our course selection. We already have a number of interested academics from

different disciplines ready to apply for the course development grant, from geographer Bella

Jordan, to Slavic literature expert Tatiana Kuzmic. We are therefore not only institutionally

committed to interdisciplinary approaches, but we already have expressed interest from different

fields of reseach at UT. As an interdisciplinary area studies institute, CREEES has contacts with

all departments and always seeks new collaborators, especially in professional schools.

We are particularly interested in advancing study of Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian and Albanian

languages. At the moment, University of Texas lacks advanced course instruction in Serbian-

Bosnian-Croatian, which is a critical language(s) for the study of the Balkans. And Albanian is

woefully understudied in the entire U.S.

8. Expected Results of Proposed Program

Aside from the need for language instruction at UT – and wider U.S. academic community -- in

Serbian-Bosnian-Croatian and Albanian we feel that all of our course developments and travel

abroad programs fill a need at UT. While UT does have an incredible depth in area studies and

international study programs, Balkans, Caucuses and Central Asia do remain underexplored.

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On a much wider basis, this is not only the issue of enhancing University of Texas

interdisciplinary area studies and languages programs. It is also about contributing to the wider

Austin/Central Texas academic community by expanding our curriculum development and

networks with our partner institutions. Ultimately, it is also about enhancing the understanding

and knowledge of the general undergraduate population of the U.S. in the critical regions of the

world that have in the past – and will potentially in the future – play a key role in the country’s

national security.

By distributing UISFL funds through CREEES, we expect to create six new thematic courses

and two new language courses, including four new study abroad programs. This will

significantly enhance our implementation of CREEES’ program in international studies and

foreign languages.

All of the above curricular, study abroad and programmatic developments will serve the larger

purpose of drawing more students to the CREEES major and minor at UT. By developing new

and exciting courses that respond directly to student demand we plan to shape our program and

create an area studies program with broader appeal. In particular, classes that can be cross-listed

in the Global Studies major (http://www.utexas.edu/cola/student-affairs/news/1705) will have a

ready audience of some 400 majors, who are required to choose regional specialties by their

program requirement, and hence be drawn to the CREEES minor. Likewise travel opportunities

to our region, that we intend to broadly advertise, will spark interest in the peoples and cultures

that we cover. Students preparing to travel to our region or returning from it, will want to take

language and area content courses to make their travel experience meaningful, and translate it

into a professional specialty. Programming will bring a broader awareness of our area studies

program to the wider campus community, sparking interest among undecided majors or

35

promoting double majors or minors among students, who have already chosen particular

disciplinary foci. Outreach to K-12 will plant the seed of interest in our region among UT bound

high school students across the state, creating future audiences for our specializations.

9. Competitive Preference Priority

CREEES application will claim both competitive preference priorities:

Competitive Preference Priority 1: CREEES will require all students taking either the newly

created courses or our language instruction courses to have successfully completed at least two

years of secondary school foreign language instruction, albeit not necessarily in the language

course created via UISFL funds.

Competitive Preference Priority 2: CREEES is proposing outreach activities that conduct pre-

service (Curriculum development and networking) and in-service (guest lecturers, speakers’

series) training for K-12 teachers in foreign languages and international studies.

Invitational Priority 1: CREEES is ultimately proposing the development of area/international

studies program to include language instruction in two-four priority languages selected from the

U.S. Department of Educations’ list of Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTLs): Albanian,

Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.

10. Miscellaneous Requirements

Evidence of Prior Planning – Evidence of planning prior to submitting the application can be

found in the organizational architecture of the planned advisory board for the execution of the

UISFL grant funds. Also, the fact that we have a number of professors already interested in

pursuing curriculum development in as many as five potential new courses is important. We also

36

have the first years’ study abroad programs essentially mapped out, and we have in-house

experts from Macedonia and Albania to facilitate both language instruction in Albanian and

eventual link ups with the Ohrid University.

CREEES will ensure that the faculty and administrators of all relevant departments and programs

served by the applicant are involved in ongoing collaboration with regard to achieving the stated

objectives of the application.

CREEES will ensure that students at the applicant institutions, as appropriate, will have equal

access to, and derive benefits from, the UISFL program.

CREEES will ensure that each institution, combination or partnership will use the Federal

assistance provided under the UISFL program to supplement and not supplant non-Federal funds

the institution expends for programs to improve undergraduate instruction in international studies

and foreign languages.

CREEES will use its dissemination resources, specifically its listserv, its newsletter and REENIC

to provide information to students regarding federally funded scholarship programs in related

areas. We will also work with our partner area studies institutes at the University of Texas to

inform a wide array of students interested in area studies. Also, we will collaborate closely with

our listed partner institutions to enhance their information about federal funding.

CREEES is part of the University of Texas, whose mission it is to encourage diverse

perspectives and a wide range of views as well as to generate debate on world regions and

international affairs. We expect to continue that mission in earnest and UISFL funds will only

further contribute our ability to do so. We are going to especially rely on the speaker series to

bring a wide audience, from both the academic and wider regional communities, to participate in

the discussions and debates going on within the campus community.

37

CREEES, through its career counseling, will continue to encourage service in areas of national

need, as identified by the Secretary of Education.

CREEES will ensure that all communication between the center and potential end-users that

deals with projects funded by the USIFL grant will clearly and visibly state that the

project/course/seminar/workshop/event is funded by the U.S. Department of Education Title VI

Grant under the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign language Program.