Wow, it seems like I just post here once a year! But it's another wonderful year for the Light Fellowship, and I wish our many, many Fellows an amazing journey. Remember:

Don't have experiences while missing the meaning. :)

I'll be following all your blogs with great enthusiasm.

Here we are, a year after my introductory post below, and the Light Fellowship Program is stronger than ever. Another group of very talented students is heading out to East Asia again, and I very much look forward to their blogs.

Hi! I'm Kelly McLaughlin, Director of the Richard U. Light Fellowship at Yale. You can learn more about the fellowship HERE. If you are looking for some recent blogs from Light Fellows, you can find that HERE.

A bit about the Light Fellowship, which is funded by the Richard U. Light Foundation in Kalamazoo, Michigan and now enjoys major support from the Maurice R. Greenberg Yale-China Initiative:

The Richard U. Light Fellowship, which sent its first 12 students abroad in 1997, fully funds nearly 150 Yalies each year to study Chinese, Japanese, and Korean intensively at top programs in East Asia. The goal of the program is to produce Yale graduates whose leadership abilities will go well beyond the Euro (or Yale)-centric. Of course, Asia's rising prominence in the world makes the fellowship's choice of region and of languages all the more significant.

Why blogging? As I tell students in New Haven before they leave to study in East Asia:

"You'll look back on your blog and realize that you are a different person in week 8 than you were in week 1." By 'different person,' of course, I mean a person with a profoundly changed or deepened view of China, Taiwan, Japan, or Korea. These widened perspectives and dramatically improved linguistic abilities also impact Yalies' plans for the rest of their time on campus (a new major or a great senior essay topic) and, often, their career choices that now include, in some way or another, East Asia or an East Asian language.

A bit about me:

I spent nearly 6 years working in Korea, eventually as a speech writer (in English) and special assistant (in Korean) for the President of Kyung Hee University. I then ran a round of programs (English Teaching Assistant and International Education Administrator) for the Fulbright Commission in Seoul before taking this job at Yale in 2002.

During those six years, I lived in Seoul with my Korean in-laws (my wife is a Korean-American who was born and raised in North Carolina). You could say, I guess, that I had the Mother of All Homestays! Needless to say, my Korean became pretty good over those years, but it's the inter-cultural abilities and friendships that I continue to marvel at.

A few years ago, I decided to invite Light Fellows to keep a blog instead of or in addition to writing the normal end of program reports that tended to be stuffed away in a shelf in some office or rarely visited even on an on-line bulletin board. Fellows are not required to keep a blog if they prefer to remain more private, but almost every student who keeps one is glad at having done so.