Singaporean ambassador to the United States and Cornell University alumna Heng-Chee Chan will give a talk titled "Southeast Asia: Facing the Next Century" at Cornell's Southeast Asia Program's brown bag lunch series Thursday, March 4, at 12:20 p.m. in the George McT. Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. During a brief visit, Chan also will meet with the approximately 150 Singaporean students currently enrolled at Cornell.

Archie Dotson, Cornell emeritus professor of government, remembers Chan as "bright, feisty and fiercely Singaporean."

"She wrote well and was a delightful person. Although she was fiercely nationalistic, I had no idea she would ever go on to become so important to politics in her nation," said Dotson, now director of graduate studies in public affairs at Cornell.

Chan received a master's degree in government from Cornell in 1968. She was appointed as Singapore's ambassador to the United States in 1996 and currently is on leave from her post as professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.

Prior to her appointment as ambassador, Chan served as executive director of the Singapore International Foundation and director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. From 1989 to 1991, she served concurrently as Singapore's permanent representative to the United Nations, as high commissioner to Canada, as well as ambassador to Mexico.

Chan has received numerous awards, including honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 1994, and from the University of Buckingham in the United Kingdom in 1998; she was voted the first International Woman of the Year in 1998 by the Organization of Chinese Women; and she was Singapore's first "Woman of the Year" in 1991. In 1986, she received a Singaporean National Book Award in the nonfiction category for A Sensation of Independence: A Political Biography of David Marshall. Chan is the author of numerous articles on politics and international security in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

For more information about Thursday's talk, contact Penny Dietrich, coordinator of outreach for the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell, at (607) 274-9452 or (607) 255-3619, ext. 15.