US Foreign Service Institute Celebrates 60 Years of Service

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Foreign Service Institute Celebrates 60 Years of Service

Established in 1947, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is celebrating 60
years of excellence as the U.S. Government's premier Foreign Policy
training center. With an annual enrollment of over 50,000, FSI prepares
foreign affairs professionals from the Department of State and 46 other
federal agencies to effectively articulate American values and to
implement the foreign policy of the United States while serving in over
160 countries around the world. FSI, also known as the George P. Shultz
Foreign Affairs Training Center, prepares first-time Foreign Service
Officers, civil servants, Ambassadors and everyone in-between for the
challenges of today's world by giving them the skills to promote the
interests of the United States.

The ability to communicate in a foreign language is the hallmark of the
professional diplomat, and FSI was established primarily to teach
languages and their associated cultures. In 1947, FSI taught 31 languages
with an enrollment of 559 students. In 2007, FSI's Language School
annually provides more than one million student-hours of training, for
basic and advanced language skills in more than 70 languages, many
considered critical languages, and taught on the Arlington campus and in
field schools in Tunisia, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. Recently, FSI has
developed media and public diplomacy training in Arabic and other critical
languages to enable our diplomats to reach broader audiences in their
native languages. Beyond the walls of the classroom, FSI offers distance
language learning programs in 30 languages.

The Foreign Service Institute helps to address the Secretary's goal of
leveraging technology to make State's workforce more agile and responsive.
FSI provides industry-standard training and certification in technical
subjects, information security and office productivity tools. Areas of
focus include continuous process improvement, quality management and a new
executive development program. IT managers in the new program will
complete 44 weeks of IT management training followed by a practicum in one
of the Department's Information Resource Management executive offices.
FSI's Warrenton Division recently qualified for ISO 9000 certification,
the international standard for high quality management processes.

Training is critical to professional development throughout a career.
Leadership is a critical component of a diplomat's training from initial
mandatory courses to the Ambassadorial seminar. Tradecraft courses enable
Department personnel to acquire specific skills needed for each assignment
from the basics of diplomatic reporting to industry specific courses for
economic officers to brand new specialized courses for staff members going
out to Provincial Reconstruction Teams and American Presence Posts.

To enable more staff members to receive training at posts around the
world, FSI has pioneered distance learning courses like "Detecting
Fraudulent Documents" or "Arabic Express" to build and sustain language
fluency and update technology and tradecraft skills. FSI's innovative
Learn Center offers 3,600 distance learning courses. For additional
information on FSI, please contact Wayne Oshima at 703-302-6730.

Source: U.S. Department of State
http://newsblaze.com/story/20070519062333tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html

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