Foreign Service Institute
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was first proposed as an in-service, graduate-level training institute for State Department employees and others in the Foreign Service.
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was first proposed as an in-service, graduate-level training institute for State Department employees and others in the Foreign Service. In 1946, President Truman signed legislation that enabled Secretary of State George C. Marshall to establish the Institute on March 13, 1947. FSI’s first home was 2115 C Street NW in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington DC, in a building that was subsequently razed for the new State Department headquarters. FSI then moved to leased space in Rosslyn, Virginia, until October 1993, when it relocated to its current home at the Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center in Arlington, Virginia.
The FSI of today would be unrecognizable to its founders. FSI offered instruction in 13 languages and about a dozen other professional and technology courses when it was first established. Over the past seven decades, training has expanded and shifted to meet the needs of an ever-evolving, globally deployed workforce. This meant providing more space for classes and studying and updating and refining the types of training we offer to reflect new global trends and the knowledge and skills required to practice effective diplomacy.
The original training divisions of FSI—New Officer Training, Advanced Officer Training, Language Studies, and Administrative and Management Studies—now represent only a few of the functions of our four schools and one center and have been joined by new core training areas like applied information technology, diplomatic tradecraft, area studies, and leadership. FSI now provides instruction in about 70 languages and offers more than 800 courses, nearly 600 on campus and 275 via distance learning platforms, to serve our globally deployed workforce when and where they need it.
Located at the site of Arlington Hall, the National Foreign Affairs Training Center campus has a unique history. Several buildings remain from the original Arlington Hall Junior College, an all-female school founded in the 1920s. At the beginning of World War II, the junior college was repurposed to be used as a codebreaking facility by U.S. Army Intelligence and Security. The property remained in use by the Department of Defense until the late 1980s before being purchased by the Department of State to be repurposed again – this time, for the training of foreign affairs professionals. Today, the campus continues to be updated and modernized to support FSI’s cutting-edge approaches to training.
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