I am Elijah Brewer III, currently an associate professor of finance at DePaul University. Prior to joining the Finance faculty of DePaul University in January 2005, I conducted financial economic research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for over 25 years. As a senior economist and assistant vice president in the Bank's Economic Research Department I was responsible to oversee the antitrust analyses of bank holding company applications in the seventh Federal Reserve district and conduct economic research on financial markets and bank regulation.

I first taught at DePaul University as an adjunct professor in the Department of Economics from 1986 to 2004. I taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in money and banking and the graduate course in business conditions. I also was an adjunct professor in the Department of Finance during the latter part of that period. Since my appointment to the rank of associate professor in the Department of Finance, my teaching has been concentrated in three areas: banking, financial markets, and international finance. Banking is an industry that is highly regulated, and regulation has had a significant impact on the financial structure and behavior of banking organizations. The courses that I teach provide me with an opportunity to share my extensive knowledge of the regulatory and monetary systems with our students, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and allow me to emphasize how regulation that is meant for "good" can have unintended consequences for the economy and the behavior of the institutions that are regulated. My teaching philosophy is "to do things in the best interests of the students."

I received a bachelor's degree from Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin, and an M.S in management and Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing my dissertation under the supervision of the 1985 Nobel Prize winner in Economics, the late Professor Franco Modigliani.

It was my first visit to Taipei when I can to teach an MBA core course, FIN513 Money and Capital Markets, in October of 2007 for the first cohort of our DePaul overseas MBA program in Taiwan. The MBA course in Money and Capital Markets is designed to study money, capital markets, and banking to understand how financial markets determine interest rates and why different assets earn different rates of returns; the economic functions of financial services firms (especially commercial banks); the role commercial banks play in financial markets and their effect on our economic system; and the role and function of central banks in the economy and how central banks' actions interact with commercial banks' actions and asset markets to affects the macroeconomy. The recent financial market meltdown in the United States that is affecting financial institutions and markets worldwide provides an interesting setting to observe and later discuss the actions of central banks as they attempt to stabilize financial markets and shield the macroeconomy from this turmoil. There are important lessons to learn about what central banks can and cannot do.

Overall, my experience in Taiwan was outstanding. I enjoyed teaching and interacting with this group of students inside and outside of the classroom. Personally, I may have gotten more out of these interactions than the students. They were serious about learning the subject matter, and the classroom discussions were the highlight of the experience. My teaching style is probably unusual, but it is tied to my philosophy of doing things in the best interests of the students. For each lecture I prepared detailed notes and made them available to the students on the blackboard, as well in a course reading package. The objectives were: to minimize any misunderstanding of what was discussed in class; to give students sufficient time to absorb what is said during the class discussion because they spend less of their time writing down the instructor's every word; and to help me anticipate issues that might develop during the course of the lecture. Each student appeared to work very hard, and was extremely attentive in class. As others have done before me, I would like to congratulate them for their outstanding efforts and achievements. I know the course was difficult and challenging, but overall, the class performed very well.

Finally, I would like to thank Pan Asia's exceptional staff for their warm hospitality toward not only me but my wife and daughter who visited Taipei during the second week of my stay. The professionalism of the staff is second to none. Words can not began to say for what the heart feel about the kindness shown me and my family over the course of our stay in Taipei. One of the highlights of my stay was the birthday celebration on the occasion of my last birthday. Thanks for making me feel at home! I'm looking forward to meeting the next set of students of DePaul MBA program in Taipei in August of this year.

Hello, my name is Robert Perkovich, better known as "Rocky," and I have been a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Management Department at DePaul University for the past 8 years. During that time I have taught Negotiations Skills, Resolving Conflict in Organizations, Strategic Management of Human Resources, and Employment Law. In addition I am a practicing arbitrator and mediator of labor and employment disputes. Before becoming an academic and professional dispute resolver, I also worked for various governmental agencies at the federal and state level regulating union-management relations.

While in Taipei this past November I taught Negotiations Skills, a course in which we explore negotiating not just to maximize your own gain or profit, but also negotiating in such a way as to maximize the gain or profit of the other party with whom you are negotiating. In doing so it was very interesting to see how the students opened their minds to this form of negotiating - an approach that most people do not intuitively adopt because most of us think that we should negotiate to win. Moreover, it was also interesting to see how the students moved away from the winning model to the collaborative model and used the skills and strategies that we had discussed.

I also extend my grateful thanks to the staff of Pan Asia who were most hospitable and understanding and whose efforts ensured that my visit was a success. I only hope that I can visit once again.