National Resource Centers Program and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Parts 655, 656, and 657</CFR> <RIN>RIN 1840-AD94</RIN> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2024-OPE-0017]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>National Resource Centers Program and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Postsecondary Education, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary proposes to amend the regulations that govern the National Resource Centers (NRC) Program, Assistance Listing Number 84.015A, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships Program, Assistance Listing Number 84.015B. The proposed regulations would clarify interpretations of statutory language, redesign the selection criteria, and make necessary updates based upon program management experience. These proposed changes would remove ambiguity and redundancy in the selection criteria and definitions of key terms, improve the application process, and align the administration of these programs with developments in modern foreign language and area studies education. A brief summary of the proposed rule is available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> in the docket for the rulemaking. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before March 25, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> please contact the program contact person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . The Department will not accept comments after the comment period closes. To ensure that the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> to submit your comments electronically. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov,</E> including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under “FAQ.” <E T="03">Note:</E> The Department's policy is generally to make comments received from members of the public available for public viewing on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. Commenters should not include in their comments any information that identifies other individuals or that permits readers to identify other individuals. The Department will not make comments that contain personally identifiable information about someone other than the commenter publicly available on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> for privacy reasons. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tim Duvall, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW, Room 5C105, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 987-0383. Email: <E T="03">timothy.duvall@ed.gov.</E> If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> <E T="03">Purpose of this Regulatory Action:</E> The regulations for the NRC and FLAS programs were last revised in 2009 (74 FR 35070) and were impacted by subsequent technical corrections made to 34 CFR part 655, International Education Programs—General Provisions, adopted in 2014 (79 FR 75867). Because these regulations provide the foundation for the administration of these programs, we have reviewed them, evaluated them for provisions that, over time, have become outdated, unnecessary, or inconsistent with other Department regulations as well as with established practices for administering these programs in the Department, and identified ways in which they can be updated, streamlined, and otherwise improved. Specifically, we propose to amend parts 655, 656, and 657 of title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations. These changes are detailed in the Summary of Major Provisions of this Regulatory Action. <E T="03">Summary of Major Provisions of this Regulatory Action:</E> As discussed in greater detail in the <E T="03">Summary of Proposed Regulations</E> section of this document, the proposed regulations would: • Make technical updates to refer to up-to-date statutory authorities, remove outdated terminology, use consistent references, and eliminate obsolete cross-references. • Clarify and streamline the selection criteria the Secretary may use to make discretionary awards under parts 656 and 657. • Add new selection criteria the Secretary may use to make discretionary grants for special purposes under part 656. • Add definitions for ambiguous terms related to program administration, including “areas of national need” and “diverse perspectives.” • Add a requirement for a geographical area of focus for discretionary grants made under parts 656 and 657. • Clarify the differences between comprehensive and undergraduate National Resource Centers for Foreign Language and Area Studies. • Add a student eligibility requirement for fellowships awarded under part 657 based upon a student's educational program. • Simplify the administration of allocations of fellowships made under part 657 by eliminating the institutional payment as a component of fellowships and allowing fellows to receive a single stipend payment. <E T="03">Costs and Benefits:</E> The Department believes that the benefits of this regulatory action would outweigh any associated costs to States, local educational agencies (LEAs), colleges and universities, and other Department applicants and grantees. The proposed regulations would, in part, update terminology to align with applicable statutes and regulations. Many of the adjustments would support the Department, its grantees, or both, in selecting high-quality grantees and to support those grantees in ensuring the effectiveness and improvement of their projects. These changes include, for example, altering selection criteria to allow for a more efficient and effective peer review process, as announced in a notice inviting applications (NIA), and adding and clarifying definitions that apply to the programs affected so that peer reviewers and applicants have a better sense of how application reviews are conducted. Please refer to the <E T="03">Regulatory Impact Analysis</E> section of this document for a more detailed discussion of costs and benefits. <E T="03">Invitation to Comment:</E> We invite you to submit comments regarding the proposed regulations. To ensure that your comments have maximum effect in developing the final regulations, we urge you to clearly identify the specific section of the proposed regulations that each of your comments addresses and to arrange your comments in the same order as the proposed regulations. We also invite you to assist us in complying with the specific requirements of Executive Orders 12866, 13563, and 14094 and their overall requirement of reducing regulatory burden that might result from the proposed regulations. Please let us know of any further ways we could reduce potential costs or increase potential benefits while preserving the effective and efficient administration of the Department's programs and activities. The Department also welcomes comments on any alternative approaches to the subjects addressed in the proposed regulations. During and after the comment period, you may inspect public comments about the proposed regulations by accessing <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . <E T="03">Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities in Reviewing the Rulemaking Record:</E> On request, we will provide an appropriate accommodation or auxiliary aid to an individual with a disability who needs assistance to review the comments or other documents in the public rulemaking record for the proposed regulations. To schedule an appointment for this type of accommodation or auxiliary aid, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Programs authorized under title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA), build institutional capacity for training and research in modern foreign languages and area studies; promote access to international and foreign language knowledge; respond to the ongoing national need for individuals with expertise and competence in world languages and area studies; advance national security by developing a pipeline of highly trained experts in critical world regions who are proficient in a large number of diverse modern foreign languages, especially but not limited to less commonly taught languages; and contribute to developing a globally competent multilingual and multicultural workforce able to engage with people in the United States and around the world. The NRC Program and the FLAS Fellowships Program are the two largest programs funded under title VI of the HEA. The NRC Program provides grants to institutions of higher education (IHE) and consortia of IHEs to establish, strengthen, and operate comprehensive and undergraduate foreign language and area studies centers. These centers serve as centers of excellence for training and teaching in any modern foreign language, research, and instruction in fields needed to provide full understanding of areas, regions, or countries where the languages ar ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 220k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━