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

<RULE> 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Department of Education (Department) amends 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. These regulations clarify interpretations of statutory language, redesign the selection criteria, and make necessary updates based upon program management experience. These regulations 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. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective September 26, 2024 except for the regulations amending parts 656 (instruction 8) and 657 (instruction 9), which are effective on August 15, 2025. <E T="03">Applicability date:</E> Parts 656 and 657 apply to all applications submitted and all new awards made under these parts for the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program after August 15, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brian Cwiek, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, 5th floor, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 987-1947. Email: <E T="03">brian.cwiek@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> <E T="03">Purpose of this Regulatory Action:</E> The regulations for the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program were last amended 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 amend parts 655, 656, and 657 of title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations. We published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) detailing proposed changes earlier this year (89 FR 13516). These final regulations incorporate several significant related changes to the proposed regulations contained in the NPRM. We also made several minor technical and editorial changes in these final regulations. We describe these changes in more detail in the <E T="03">Analysis of Comments and Changes</E> section below. Below is a brief overview of significant related changes to these final regulations compared to the NPRM. <E T="03">Program purposes.</E> We added a new section in part 655 that describes the purposes of the International Education Programs, including the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program, authorized by title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA). The final regulations for the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program now refer to these broader purposes of the International Education Programs. <E T="03">Undergraduate centers.</E> We added a cost limitation for undergraduate NRCs that requires projects and project activities to predominantly benefit undergraduate teaching and learning. Other changes more closely align selection criteria with the expectation that undergraduate NRCs make a distinctive contribution by preparing undergraduate students to matriculate into advanced language and area studies programs and professional language school programs. <E T="03">Fellowship payments.</E> We maintained the current structure of fellowship payments for the FLAS Fellowships Program, meaning that fellowships will continue to consist of an institutional payment and a stipend payment in addition to any permitted allowances. <E T="03">Educational programs.</E> We substantially revised the educational program eligibility criterion for the FLAS Fellowships Program. The educational program eligibility requirement will not apply to summer fellowships. In addition, these final regulations allow students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and professional fields to satisfy this eligibility requirement during the academic year through a combination of academic advising and coursework, even if their educational programs do not ordinarily include or require modern foreign language study or area studies coursework. <E T="03">Institutional responsibilities.</E> We added a new section in part 657 that describes the responsibilities of institutions that receive an allocation of fellowships under the FLAS Fellowships Program. This section enumerates existing responsibilities of institutions receiving funding under that part without adding additional obligations. <E T="03">Employment practices.</E> We eliminated consideration of employment practices from the selection criteria for the NRC Program. <E T="03">Required assurances.</E> We added a new assurance for both the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program addressing employment practices and institutional travel policies. These assurances are a required component of applications to these programs. <E T="03">Public Comment:</E> In response to our invitation in the NPRM, the Department received 113 comments on the proposed regulations. We address those comments in the <E T="03">Analysis of Comments and Changes</E> section below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Analysis of Comments and Changes</HD> An analysis of the public comments received and the changes to the regulations since publication of the NPRM follows. We group issues according to subject. We discuss other substantive issues under the sections of the regulations to which they pertain. Generally, we do not address minor, non-substantive changes (such as renumbering paragraphs, adding a word, or typographical errors). Additionally, we do not address recommended changes that the statute does not authorize the Secretary to make or comments pertaining to operational processes. We generally do not address comments pertaining to issues that were not within the scope of the NPRM. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Purposes of the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program </HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> One commenter noted the proposed regulations adequately address the mission of the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program through the addition of new definitions. However, the commenter suggested addressing the mission or purpose at greater length in §§ 656.1 and 657.1, noting that such an addition would help applicants and evaluators understand the fundamental purpose of the programs, leading to better applications and evaluations. <E T="03">Discussion:</E> We agree with the commenter that the programs serve the security, stability, and economic vitality of the United States. Indeed, Congress made a finding that, “The security, stability, and economic vitality of the United States in a complex global era depend upon American experts in and citizens knowledgeable about world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs, as well as upon a strong research base in these areas.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> We agree the regulations should provide greater clarity on how the purposes of the various programs authorized under title VI of the HEA apply to the NRC Program and the FLAS Fellowships Program. The final regulations address this matter by adding a new § 655.5 that incorporates the statutory purposes of the International Education Programs; specifies how the purposes apply to these programs, including the NRC Program and the FLAS Fellowships Program; and summarizes the Department's obligation to coordinate these Federal programs. We have provided further clarification of the statutory program purposes that apply to the NRC Program and the FLAS Fellowships program in §§ 656.1 and 657.1, respectively. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  20 U.S.C. 1121(a)(1). </FTNT> <E T="03">Changes:</E> We added § 655.5, which addresses the purposes of the programs authorized by part A of title VI of the HEA. We also added new §§ 656.1(b) and 657.1(b) that refer to the new § 655.5. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Geographic Area of Focus Requirement for the NRC Program and the FLAS Fellowships Program</HD> <E T="03">Comments:</E> Ten commenters expressed disagreement with the proposed requirement of a geographic focus for NRC and FLAS grants. The commenters concluded that, by eliminating an international category that does not take into account a geographic area of focus for the NRC Program and FLAS Fellowships Program, the programs would lose the distinctive perspective provided by an exclusively international focus and adversely affect international studies programs, which benefit from funding under these programs. One commenter specifically described international NRCs as especially nimble in their ability to respond to emerging crises and community needs. Furthermore, commenters explained how current global and international studies NRCs work collaboratively to support education on important global issues. One commenter argued that the proposal to eliminate an international focus runs counter to the program's inte ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 226k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━