The Language Flagship Program at Brigham Young University was discontinued in May 2024 because of government funding cuts.
The program, funded by the Department of Defense, was an undergraduate program that offered students opportunities to enhance their language skills to a professional level.
According to the flagship center website, students were provided with experiences that focused on global engagement, professional skills, language proficiency and community and service. At BYU, Chinese and Arabic were offered through the program.
Kirk Belnap, a professor in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, was the director of the Arabic flagship program.
Belnap said a loss associated with the cancellation of the program was the departure of Ahmad Karout, a native Arabic speaker from Syria who worked as the academic director and coordinator for the program.
“We don’t have an Arab who is full-time on the faculty, so losing Ahmad Karout was a real loss for us,” Belnap said.
One of the opportunities offered through the program was the chance to travel abroad for intensive language study.
Chinese Flagship students were sent to China before COVID-19 and then to Taiwan post-pandemic. The Arabic study abroad was in Morocco.
Nicholas Heil joined the Arabic flagship program in 2020 and participated in the capstone from 2023 to 2024 before its discontinuation.
“It provided a lot of opportunities that were really cool, and then the capstone was really helpful for getting to an advanced level of Arabic,” Heil said.
“I think we were cut because we are a private university and they knew that they could cut us and we’d be okay," Belnap said.
Even without this program available, BYU has created an independently funded Master of Arts in Professional Language (MAPL). This program provides similar opportunities for students.
The MAPL program first admitted students learning Chinese in fall 2022. It began teaching Arabic in 2024 and administrators hope to offer French sometime this year. Steve Riep is the director of the MAPL program and has been with the program since it started.
While the flagship program was more flexible, Riep said the MAPL program requires a professional focus.
“We give them an opportunity to develop professional-level fluency in a target language, in a professional domain,” Riep said. “So it would be in whatever their professional area is. That could be microbiology, engineering, business or even diplomacy.”
Riep said MAPL also includes a capstone year abroad for students to help them practice their target language in a professional setting.
“The program is growing; it’s begun sort of small, but our hope is that this year we’re going to have a much larger pool of applicants than we’ve had in the past. We’re excited about the future,” Riep said.