FLARE stands for Foreign Language Acquisition Research and Education. It is the name of the interdisciplinary program at The University of Iowa that sponsors the PhD in Second Language Acquisition [1]. In other words, FLARE is not the name of the degree that students achieve; rather, it is the program within which students study to obtain the PhD in Second Language Acquisition.

FLARE’s PhD on Second Language Acquisition at The University of Iowa began with in fall 2000. To date, FLARE has graduated more than 20 students and has 20-25 full-time students in its program. FLARE students are able to take a variety of courses taught by the 20+ affiliated faculty members [2] from a number of departments and programs here at Iowa.