The Richard U. Light Foundation of Kalamazoo, Michigan, working with Yale University faculty, has established a program to enable Yale students to study East Asian languages in East Asia. The Light Foundation's emphasis on the importance of foreign language study and global exposure is extraordinarily forward-thinking. The Pacific Basin has now become the main force of global trade and investment, and its countries account for one-half of the world's total output of goods and services.
China is the most populous country, and Japan is our second largest trading partner.
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. Light Fellowships will be the major source of program funds for language students' 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. Fellows will be selected based a general competition among Yale students of all departments and schools, with emphasis on undergraduates in Yale College. Citizenship will not be a factor in the selections. Applicants must have achieved some basic mastery of the language they intend to study, but may not be fluent speakers of the language.