ALLEX Foundation: Alliance for Language Learning and Educational Exchange

The ALLEX Foundation enables universities to establish a new Chinese or Japanese language program by providing professionally trained instructors who teach in exchange for tuition, room and board waivers.

ALLEX instructors are native-speaking Chinese and Japanese language instructors trained in the United States by preeminent scholars of Asian language pedagogy to establish and maintain Asian language programs at U.S. universities.

Over 600 instructors have been placed since 1988; more than 75 are still teaching in the field, some having attained professorships and lectureships at the nations most elite institutions, including Harvard University, M.I.T., Cornell University, Wellesley College, Truman State University, and Hamilton College.

The Intercultural Exchange Program (IEP) provides universities with a professionally trained native Chinese or Japanese instructor who would teach one or two language courses for a period of two years. Instructors do not receive a salary; instead  instructors teach in exchange for room and board (often a room in the “language house”) and a tuition waiver to pursue a master’s, associate’s, or second bachelor’s degree at your institution.

Institutions with established Chinese programs unable to commit to the full two-year teaching assistantship plan, may request a lecturer with a one-year commitment through the CTAP program to augment and enrich course offerings or to supply sabbatical replacements. Instructors in the one year plan teach in exchange for permission to audit one or two classes and for room and board. (Many instructors stay in the “language house” and serve as head of programming.)

Both programs enable universities to establish new Chinese and Japanese programs quickly and inexpensively in this period when all post-secondary institutions face severe financial difficulties. ALLEX is a proven model for starting a new Asian language program; the program has run successfully at more than 160 colleges for 22 years. Many of our partner institutions such as the University of Southern Indiana and Truman State University have been with us for more than twenty years.