The Richard U. Light Foundation of Kalamazoo, Michigan, working with members of the faculty, has established a program of fellowships that will enable Yale students to study East Asian languages in East Asia, beginning this spring.
The fellowships, currently funded at $250,000 per year, will provide the major source of financial support for language study. During 1997-98, between 12 to 16 students will able to pursue language study at specially selected sites in the People's Republic of China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
"The Light Foundation's emphasis on the importance of foreign language study and global exposure is extraordinarily forward- thinking. Yale is enormously grateful to the late Dr. Light for his generosity," says Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead.
"I'm very pleased that the long-anticipated Light Fellowships can now be made available to Yale students," says Edward Kamens, faculty director of the fellowships and professor of Japanese literature. "The fellowships offer a host of new opportunities for our students to study in East Asia and at the same time the foundation has made it possible for us to strengthen our advising about those opportunities. All the selected study sites have been visited and recommended by Yale faculty members who teach East Asian languages. The flow of information about study programs in China, Japan and Korea will be greatly improved. Best of all, Yale students will certainly be more highly motivated than ever to study these languages and those selected as Light Fellows will be able to do so in East Asia itself as well as at Yale."
"This splendid and timely gift builds on the existing and expanding strengths of East Asian Studies at Yale," observes Helen Siu, professor of anthropology and chair of the Council on East Asian Studies. "The learning of East Asian languages in their original cultural environments has the added value of creating cultural sensitivities towards a region the importance of which the world needs increasingly to acknowledge."
Although the fellowships are primarily designed for undergraduates, graduating seniors, graduate and professional students are also eligible to apply. Light Fellowships will provide transportation, tuition, room and board, health insurance and a small stipend, and may be used for whole-year, single-term or summer programs, or combinations thereof.
The fellowships will be awarded based on a general competition, which is open to students of all departments and schools. Citizenship will not be a factor in the decision-making process. Applicants must have achieved some basic mastery of the language they intend to study, but are not required to be fluent speakers of the language.
The deadline for applications for spring term study abroad is Nov. 1 and awards will be announced by Dec.13. The deadline for summer study abroad is Feb. 14 and awards will be announced by March 28.
Xinmin Liu, graduate student in the department of comparative
literature, has been appointed as program assistant for the Light
Fellowships at Yale. Interested students are invited to call him at
432-9345 to make an appointment or send e-mail to:
light.fellow@yale.edu. Updates on his schedule will be posted on the
Council on East Asian Studies World Wide Web page
Richard Upjohn Light 1902-94, the founder of the foundation
that bears his name, was a pioneer neurosurgeon and aviator, an
avid cinematographer and former president of the American
Geographical Society. He flew around the world by seaplane in 1934-
35 and down the length of South America, across the Atlantic and up
the length of Africa in 1937-38. After graduating from Culver
Military Academy, he earned an undergraduate degree from Yale in
1924 and a M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School in
1928. From 1937 to 1968, he was a director of the Upjohn Company,
the pharmaceuticals corporation founded by his grandfather, W.E.
Upjohn.
Mr. Light's connections with Yale did not end with his
graduation. He returned to New Haven to serve as director of the
surgical laboratory at the School of Medicine 1933-35. In 1947 he
was a member of the committee that rebuilt the Yale-in-China
program -- now called the Yale China Association -- after World War
II. He served on the Yale University Council 1956-63. In 1962, Mr.
Light endowed an undergraduate scholarship which is still awarded
each year.
Return to: News Stories