Spring 2006 Bridging Scholarships Awarded

Twenty-eight undergraduate students were selected to receive Bridging Scholarships for Study Abroad in Japan in Spring 2006. The Bridging Scholarship program, administered by ATJ since 1999, with the generous support of the Japan-US Friendship Commission, has now awarded scholarships to more than 600 students who spend a semester or a year in Japan on exchanges and other study programs.

Recipients of Bridging Scholarships receive awards of $2,500 or $4,000 (depending on the length of their stay in Japan). Funding for the scholarships is contributed by organizations and corporations with an interest in Japan-US exchanges, through donations to the nonprofit US-Japan Bridging Foundation; donors to the Spring 2006 scholarships include Citigroup, Deloitte Touch Tohmatsu, The Freeman Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, Morgan Stanley, Nishimoto Trading, PricewaterhouseCoopers & ChuoAoyama Audit Corp., Shinsei Bank, The Starr Foundation, Teradyne, and Weyerhaeuser.

The next group of 50 scholarships, for students whose study in Japan begins in Fall 2006, will be selected this spring. Please encourage your students to apply for these scholarships. A copy of the application form is printed in this issue of the Newsletter. You also will receive in the mail a copy of the application brochures with information on applying for both Bridging Scholarships and two special scholarships offered by Morgan Stanley Japan. Information and application forms for both the Bridging and Morgan Stanley scholarships are also available on the ATJ website, at www.colorado.edu/ealc/atj/Bridging/scholarships.html.

We would like to acknowledge and thank the hard-working members of the scholarship selection committee, who contribute many hours of their time evaluating hundreds of applications each year and selecting each group of Bridging Scholars. For Spring 2006, the members of the selection committee were Mako Beecken, Pamela Fields, Kimberly Jones, Akiko Kakutani, Seiichi Makino, Ginger Marcus, David Mills, Judith Rabinovitch, Christopher Thompson, Patricia Thornton, Yasuko Ito Watt, and Suwako Watanabe.

The following students received Bridging Scholarships for Spring 2006:

ATJ is now accepting applications beginning for the next group of Bridging Scholarships, for study in Japan beginning in Fall 2006. Please encourage your students who are going on study-abroad programs to apply. Information and application forms are on the Web at www.colorado.edu/ealc/atj/Bridging/scholarships.html.