Keith Schoppa, History, and Joanne Li, Finance, will be the featured speakers at the eighth annual Deans’ Symposium on Friday, April 29, 2005, from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. in the Fourth Floor Programming Room of the Andrew White Student Center.

The Deans’ Symposium celebrates the achievements of Loyola faculty in the areas of research, service, and teaching. Each year the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Dean of the Sellinger School of Business and Management select a faculty member from their respective schools who embodies Loyola’s high standards of intellectual achievement.

Keith Schoppa, Professor and Doehler Chair in Asian History, is a renowned expert on China. He has two forthcoming books, Modern East Asia: Regional and National Identities amid Changing Contexts and the second edition of Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Changes in Modern Chinese History. In 1997, his book Blood Road: the Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China won the Joseph Levenson Prize for the best book on twentieth-century China. Schoppa is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships for College Teachers, an NEH-Rockefeller summer grant at the Newberry Library, an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Fellowship, and an ACLS Summer Language Training Grant.

In his presentation “Fighting Bubonic Plague in Two Chinese Cities, 1940-41,” Dr. Schoppa will present an analysis of the response of two Chinese cities to bubonic plague, which was unleashed by Japanese biological warfare in 1940 and 1941. Schoppa also will discuss the impact of the political culture of these two cities, as well as the measures that these cities took to fight the plague.

Joanne Li is an Associate Professor of Finance and teaches in Loyola’s undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA programs. Her research focuses on corporate governance, and her other interests include international finance, investment, and Chinese business practices. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Financial Review, Financial Review, Quarterly Journal of Business and Economics, International Journal of Business, Managerial Finance Journal, Chinese Economy, World Economy and China, and Journal of Financial Education. Her edited work Corporate Governance: Chinese Practices and American Experience, published in China, was recognized on the China Business Daily’s best-seller list.

In a presentation entitled “Corporate Governance: The Past and the Future,” Li takes on the timely issue of changes in the investment world precipitated by recent corporate malfeasance. She will discuss current efforts to reform corporate governance structures and empirical results related to these efforts, as the business community works seeks to ensure that the WorldCom and Enron scandals are not repeated in the future.

Sponsored by the Office of Grant Services, the Deans’ Symposium highlights the work of outstanding Loyola faculty, giving the speakers an opportunity to share their research with other faculty and administrators.

A reception will follow the presentations. For further information or to RSVP, contact Sylvia DuRant, Grants Development Officer, ext. 2561 or sdurant@loyola.edu.

by: Jamie Smith, Associate Director, Public Relations