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Taiwan's Fulbright program celebrates its 50-year history

The Fulbright Program, the US government's flagship program for international exchange, has created a lasting impression on more than 2,000 academics from Taiwan and the US, American Institute in Taiwan Director Stephen Young said last night at a gala dinner celebrating five decades of the program in Taiwan.

For 50 years, Taiwan's Fulbright program has been a pioneer in responding to professional needs emerging from Taiwan's rapid economic and democratic development, Young said, adding that many of Taiwan's leaders, including Cabinet members, university presidents, professors and artists, are Fulbright alumni.

Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝), Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Elizabeth Yu (朱玉鳳) and former president of Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University William Mobely, a former Fulbright scholar in Taiwan, were honored guests at the Taipei event.

The prestigious scholarship program was proposed to the US Congress in 1945 by Senator J. William Fulbright. In the aftermath of World War II, he argued the program would be a much-needed mechanism to create mutual understanding between the US and the international community. The program was approved by Congress and signed into law by US president Harry Truman the next year.

In Taiwan, the Fulbright program is administered by the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. The foundation has sent over 1,000 Taiwan researchers to the US and more than 700 US academics to Taiwan.

For the 2007 to 2008 academic year, the program is supporting 53 Taiwan grantees and 35 US grantees. The topics that will be studied by US Fulbright scholars in Taiwan include womens studies, physics and astronomy, business administration, anthropolgy, journalism and linguistics.
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