FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY'S JOSEPH G. JABBRA, ACADEMIC VICE PRESIDENT, TO ASSUME PRESIDENTIAL POST AT THE LEBANESE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN BEIRUT

January 12, 2004 –Joseph G. Jabbra, PhD, Academic Vice President at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, has been named President of the Lebanese American University in Beirut, effective June 1, LMU President Robert B. Lawton, SJ, announced today.

"I make the announcement with mixed feelings – happiness for Joe at being selected for such an important and challenging position, gratitude for all that he has done for LMU, and sadness as an extraordinary administrator, colleague, and friend prepares to move on," Lawton said. "His contributions to this university are more than we could ever adequately count."

Lawton appointed LMU School of Education Dean Albert P. Koppes, OCarm., PhD, as Acting Academic Vice President for 2004-05 and will initiate a search for a new academic vice president to assume office in 2005. Koppes was Academic Vice President at LMU from 1983 to 1990 and became the School of Education?s first Dean in 2000. Shane P. Martin, PhD, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Education, will become Acting Dean of the School of Education for the next academic year.

Jabbra has been Academic Vice President and Professor of Political Science at LMU since 1990. A native of Lebanon, he received his Licence in Law at the Universit� Saint-Joseph in Beirut in 1965 and his PhD in political science at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, in 1970. He then went on to hold a number of positions at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, including Vice President, Academics and Research, from 1980 to 1990.

"LMU has been my home for the past fourteen years and these have been the most rewarding of my career," Jabbra said. "I value so highly the trust the LMU community has put in me and my relationships with the faculty, the deans, the vice presidents, and, above all, our president Bob Lawton."

Jabbra said he was drawn to the Lebanese American University presidency so that he could "play a leadership role on the international scene and make a contribution to peace through higher education." He is an author or editor of nine books and is a specialist on the Middle East and in International Law.

The Lebanese American University, chartered in New York, has approximately 7,000 students on three campuses and includes undergraduate and graduate schools in the arts and sciences, business, engineering and architecture, and pharmacy, and plans a new school of medicine. Founded by Presbyterian missionaries in the mid-1800s to provide education for women, it is coeducational and became a university in 1992. It has offices in New York and Beirut, trustees in London, and campuses in Beirut, Byblos, and Sidon. For more information, see www.lau.edu.lb.

Founded in 1911, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles is the eighth largest of the nation's 28 Jesuit colleges and universities and the largest Catholic university in Southern California.  With a strong base in the liberal arts, LMU serves more than 5,300 undergraduates and about 3,000 graduate students.  LMU includes four colleges:  the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, the College of Business Administration, the College of Communication and Fine Arts, and the College of Science and Engineering, as well as the School of Education, the School of Film and Television, the Graduate Division, LMU Extension, and Loyola Law School.  For more information, visit the LMU website at www.lmu.edu.

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