The MSU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies was awarded two Title VI grants from the U.S. Department of Education: National Resource Center (NRC) and a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grants.

The NRC award supports teaching and scholarship on Latin America and the Caribbean as well as outreach on the region. As a National Resource Center, CLACS serves as a public resource on Latin America for K-12 educators, community college faculty, businesses, and government officials throughout Michigan and across the nation.

In this role, CLACS has responded to requests by teachers and administrators from local school districts for help in developing equitable and inclusive policies, curricula, and practices for their schools and classrooms. For example, an annual Art-Based Global DEI Program at the Broad Art Museum prepares educators to use museum artifacts and exhibits to deepen students' critical thinking and curiosity about people around the world, while building skills of observation, imagination, and creativity through experiences with art.

A parallel program on global literature will prepare teachers to engage award-winning children's/young adult books and offer pedagogical strategies for their effective use in classrooms. The workshops will feature winners of the national Américas Award, which honors books that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States.

The FLAS grant will support fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students that study Less Commonly Taught Languages. For Latin America, these include Portuguese and Indigenous languages, as well as Haitian Kreyol. Fellowships provide both tuition and living stipends and are available for the academic year as well as for summer intensive programs.

Additional institutions that are NRC and/or FLAS programs for the Latin American/Caribbean region include:

• Florida International University
• Indiana University
• Stanford University
• University of Arizona
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of California, Los Angeles
• University of Florida
• University of Illinois
• University of Kansas
• University of Michigan
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & Duke University Consortium
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Texas at Austin
• University of Utah & Brigham Young University Consortium
• University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Consortium
• Vanderbilt University