For more information, contact Richard Doty, (937) 775-3232.

September 14, 2004

Chinese MBA students at Wright State to learn about philanthropy in America

A 10 a.m. presentation is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 16, in the Student Union that will feature leaders from several Dayton area philanthropic institutions. Scheduled for a panel discussion are Mike Parks, director of the Dayton Foundation; Dennis Hanaghan, executive director, and Yvonne Whitaker, program director, both of the Wallace Foundation; and Mary Karr, vice president of the NCR Foundation.

They will address some 30 Chinese business leaders from the Shandong Province near Beijing who are spending this calendar year at the WSU Raj Soin College of Business. Their intensive, 12-month program to earn an MBA executive format degree started in January.

“We believe it is certainly appropriate to expose these students to the philanthropic side of the American business community,” explained Berkwood Farmer, Ph.D., dean of the Raj Soin College of Business who will moderate the panel discussion.

Yibing Hou, director of international trade for a coal mining company in China, is one of the students looking forward to the presentation. “I am very interested in learning specific details about philanthropy in America because this is becoming increasingly important in China as we expand our international business,” he said. Long Wang, who directs marketing and production for a fisheries company, agreed with his classmate. “Business does some charity work in China, mostly in conjunction with disasters such as floods and earthquakes, but we believe this will become more important in the years ahead,” he said.

Andrew Lai, Ph.D., an emeritus professor of business at WSU who is coordinating the China program, said there is little philanthropic history in China from the American perspective of the business sector providing extra financial support for community programs. He added, however, that the Chinese have a strong history of charitable giving. This has been channeled mostly through responses to natural disasters mentioned by Wang and has historically been handled more as a family matter than a concern of the business community, he said.

Hou, Wang and their colleagues are the first cohort group from abroad to study at Wright State. Their studies here encompass such fields as accounting, finance, economics, information systems, human resource management and marketing.

“These students are recognized business leaders who have been identified as key decision makers who will lead the province’s efforts to develop their market economy,” said Farmer.

For more details on the upcoming philanthropy presentation, contact Colleen Lampton Brill, director of development at the Raj Soin College of Business, at colleen.lampton@wright.edu or (937) 775-2852.