Oct. 5, 2005
Media Advisory
To: News Directors and News Editors
From: Veronika Avery, Director of Media Relations, 342-5444,
vavery@ulm.edu

College of Business Event Features WorldCom Whistle Blower

University of Louisiana at Monroe students learning about the business world will gain an insider's view on ethical business practices when they hear speaker Cynthia Cooper during the College of Business Symposium.

The College of Business Administration at ULM will host its annual business symposium during homecoming week at ULM. The featured speaker, Cooper, is known nationally for uncovering corporate fraud at WorldCom. She will speak Friday, October 14 at 10 a.m. in Brown Auditorium. Her talk is expected to last an hour and a half, with a short Q&A session at the end. The talk is open to the public free of charge.

Cooper is most well known for her role in uncovering the corporate fraud at WorldCom - to date the largest corporate fraud in history. She was named one of Time Magazine's 2002 Persons of the Year after detecting and reporting the fraud. Time Magazine has been naming its Person of the Year since 1927. The designation is given to the person or person(s) who most affected events during the year. She has become a highly-sought after leadership and ethics speaker.

"I've seen Cynthia Cooper's presentation before and it is excellent," said Dr. Michelle McEacharn, Associate Dean for Academics in the College of Business. McEacharn helped organized Coopers appearance at ULM.

"Not only is the story of her experience at WorldCom fascinating but she also tells the story very well. She easily relates how ordinary people are sometimes faced with small issues or decisions and how much strength and dedication it takes to act professionally and ethically," McEacharn said.

This, the second annual business symposium, will begin on Wednesday afternoon, October 12, with the Brain Bowl. In this competition, 10 teams will compete to capture the trophy for the next year. On Thursday at noon, a cookout for faculty, staff and students is scheduled.

New to the symposium is a style show coordinated by Dr. June Bruyninckx. If you have ever wondered what "business casual" means, this session should explain it.

Following Cooper's presentation at 10 a.m. on Friday, Sunil Kumar, CEO and President of International Specialty Products, and a ULM MBA graduate, will talk about his experiences of leading a multinational firm with revenue over $1.4 billion as the keynote luncheon speaker. Kumar will talk about four specific cases that he has been faced with in his career and how he applied knowledge gained from our MBA program to address them.