[2 June 2006]
Singapore Management University appoints new Dean for Business School

Professor Pang Eng Fong to helm Lee Kong Chian School of Business

Singapore, 2 June 2006 - The Singapore Management University (SMU) today announced the appointment of its new Dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business following the completion of an extensive series of interviews with international and local candidates. Succeeding Professor David B. Montgomery is Professor Pang Eng Fong who joined SMU in 2002 and who assumed the position of interim Dean in January this year. Together with his appointment as Dean, Professor Pang will also be the Vice Provost for Academic Strategic Planning.

"Pang Eng Fong comes to the position of Business School Dean from a strong field of international candidates. By any standards, Eng Fong stood out as a superb candidate with a distinguished academic reputation and as a public officer with a stellar record. His appointment was unanimously affirmed by the Board of Trustees," said Professor Howard Hunter, President of SMU. "His international academic standing and significant diplomatic standing, coupled with his reputation as an authority on economic and political policies in Asia , positions him as the perfect blend of scholarship and experience. We are delighted in welcoming him as the leader of the next generation of SMU business graduates."

Professor Pang said, "I am honoured at the appointment as Dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business. Within a very short span of time, the School has quickly established itself as one of the leading business institutions in the region. I have a deep respect for the vision of the university to produce academically strong graduates with an appreciation of social responsibility. With its list of distinguished faculty and staff and an impressive student body, I am thrilled and I look forward to helping the School achieve even greater heights in the years ahead."

As Dean, Professor Pang will perform the role of chief academic and administrative officer for the Lee Kong Chian School of Business. He will work closely with the Provost to identify and recruit top faculty and students from around the world. He represents the School on all matters including research, teaching, alumni relations and financial management. He also has the responsibility to create a climate which encourages lively intellectual exchange. On behalf of SMU, he will work closely with the Provost and President of SMU to strengthen and seek new areas of collaboration with institutions and corporations.

Professor Tan Chin Tiong, Provost of SMU commented, "Pang Eng Fong is a fine diplomat, scholar and teacher, and is well respected at SMU. He possesses the energy, vision and experience to reach out and work with our senior academic staff and students. We could not have found a more capable candidate to lead our Business School . Already, Eng Fong has done an outstanding job as interim Dean, and no one has more acute first-hand knowledge of opportunities and challenges facing the Business School . Aside from the School, he has also contributed significantly to the Quality Assurance Framework for Universities (QAFU) exercise in the past six months. He is strongly devoted to upkeeping the School's reputation as a fast-growing leader in business management. I am confident that Eng Fong will have enormous success in building upon the solid foundation laid down by former Dean David Montgomery, and that he will guide the SMU's Business School to new levels of excellence."

Professor Pang earned his doctorate at the University of Illinois and has devoted much of his working life towards public service and education. A skilled diplomat, he was previously Ambassador of Singapore to the Republic of Korea and Mongolia, Belgium with concurrent accreditation to the European Communities, Luxembourg, the Holy See and the Netherlands and Permanent Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. His last ambassadorial posting was as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and concurrent appointment as Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland. He has served on the boards of several government agencies, such as the Urban Redevelopment Authority, National Library Board and Science Council. He has also worked as a consultant to the Commonwealth Secretariat, International Labour Organisation (ILO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Bank and other international organisations. He also has strong affiliations within academic circles having held full visiting professorships at the University of Michigan and Columbia University as well as visiting appointments in the OECD and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Professor Pang began his career with the Economics Department at the University of Singapore before rising to the position of Director of the Economic Research Centre prior his public service appointments. He joined SMU in 2002 and has taught courses on government, business and society, macroeconomics, and management & leadership.

Professor Pang is the author of several books - including Education, Manpower and Development in Singapore , Regionalisation and Labour Flows in Pacific Asia and Foreign Investment and Industrialisation in Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand (with Linda Lim, which was awarded the best non-fiction book by the Singapore National Book Development Council in 1994) - and has also contributed to numerous books, journals and conference papers. He is currently on the editorial boards of The Journal of Asian Business , International Migration , and Competition and Change: The Journal of Global Business and Political Economy .

Professor Pang assumes deanship on 1 June 2006.

About Lee Kong Chian School of Business

The first of SMU's four schools to be established, the School of Business opened its doors to the pioneer batch of 306 Bachelor of Business Management (BBM) students in August 2000. A two-storey building was constructed on a piece of land at Evans Road, and in the following year the School moved into the extensively renovated Bukit Timah campus, former home to other Singapore tertiary institutions. A landmark gift of S$50 million to SMU from the Lee Foundation in 2004 led to the School's naming as the Lee Kong Chian School of Business. In 2005, when SMU relocated to the Bras Basah district in the heart of Singapore, the School moved into its new state-of-the art building at Victoria and Stamford Roads. The School comprises half of SMU's student body and faculty, and its building is the largest of the four schools. The School's first two cohorts of graduates in the BBM programme have strongly impressed in the marketplace - 100% of them were employed within six months of graduation and 75% had two or more job offers. In addition to its popular and successful BBM programme, the School also offers three MSc programmes - in Wealth Management, in Applied Finance and in Finance (by research).

.