Foote offered Chinese for the first time this September, and was able to hire a multi-talented Chinese teacher born in Taiwan who is also a classically trained violinist. 

"When I heard about the opening at Foote, I saw it as my chance to start a program from the ground up helping children learn Chinese in the way I believe is best," she says. "I was impressed with how seriously Foote has taken this program, and the amount of preparation that was done before launching the program. "

She was precocious as a child, and read and followed western literature and media closely. After prodding her parents for years to relocate from Taiwan, she moved to California to live with family friends when she was 13.

"I believed that I was going to get an education in the United States that was more well-rounded and less rote than was being offered in Taiwan," she says. She attended Occidental College in Los Angeles (the alma mater of Barack Obama), where she studied music performance with a focus on violin. 

"I had more of an interest in performance and musicology then," she says. "But I taught piano - a lot! - in college and I enjoyed getting the students to revel in the process of making music."  

She met her husband David, a double bass player from Milwaukee, when both played in a joint Occidental-California Technological Institute orchestra. They married immediately after graduation, and have two children, Corinne, 10, and Jamie, 8. 

For three years they lived in Australia for David's post-doctoral work, where Lely played violin in a folk band and attended the University of Western Australia for graduate studies in violin performance. Yale lured them to New Haven about 11 years ago, when David became a member of the geology and geophysics faculty. During those years, Lely taught piano, until the couple decided to move to Taiwan to expose their children to the culture. They stayed for a year.

"I was very impressed with how education has changed since I was a young student," Lely says. "My children went to local schools in Taiwan and I saw the creative process in their learning. I felt very happy about that."

She returned to college to specialize in teaching Chinese as a second language, and since returning to New Haven, has taught Chinese at the New Haven Chinese Language School and in the New Haven public schools. Her performance training shows in the classroom - she is expressive, articulate, and in command of her audience.

How does she feel about her decision to join the Foote faculty? "I love it," she says. "I actually go away from school feeling elated every day."