The launching of Sputnik I in 1957 led to the federal government’s most significant participation in modern foreign language and area studies research and training in history—The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. In 1959 the U.S. federal Office of Education began administering the National Resource Centers (NRC) Program under Title VI of the NDEA, and today the U.S. Department of Education continues to administer the program under the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended. UC Berkeley has been an active participant in Title VI programs since their inception, and proudly our own Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (known prior to 2000 as the Center for Slavic and East European Studies) has been a National Resource Center continuously since 1959. Title VI programs play an important part in international education at UC Berkeley by funding National Resource Centers and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships.
As a National Resource Center, ISEEES is able to promote a broad range of programmatic activities focusing on our region of the world, including language and area studies instruction, scholarly research, funding for library resources, public outreach, and teacher training.