A senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China will visit St. Johnsbury Academy March 15 as part of an ongoing Speaker Series sponsored by the Academy’s Colwell Center for Global Understanding.

Colonel Yunzhu Yao, currently director of the Asia Pacific Office, Department of World International Studies, Academy of Military Science will speak during the school’s daily morning Chapel assembly, meet with classes during the school day, then speak during a 7 p.m. presentation open to the public in the school’s Stuart Black Box Theatre, located on the lower level of the Charles Hosmer Morse Center for The Arts.

Yao joined the PLA in 1970 and has served as an enlisted officer, staff officer, lecturer, and deputy director and director of a research office. She was also elected a member of the Tenth National People’s Congress of China, representing the PLA, and finished her five-year term in March 2008.

Her experience also includes a year spent as a visiting scholar at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and two months of study in the United States as an Eisenhower Fellow.

She has published and translated books, and produced articles and papers on world military and security affairs, U.S. military affairs, Asia-Pacific security issues, cross Taiwan Straits relations, and Korean Peninsula security issues.

Recognized in 2007 by the All China Women’s Federation as one of the “Top Ten Outstanding Chinese Women,” she has written chapters that have appeared in Post-War American Deterrence: Theory and Policies, On Asia-Pacific Security, and in 20th Century Strategic Legacy and the World Through Chinese Scholars.

Yao holds a Master of Arts degree from the PLA’s Foreign Languages Institute and a PhD in military science from the Academy of Military Science.

She is currently conducting research at the Fellows Program of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, which partners with the Academy to provide guests for the Colwell Speaker Series.

                  The Colwell Center was launched at the start of the 2003-04 school year through a gift from the Steven B. Colwell family of Carlsbad, California with the goal of creating a forum where the sharing of ideas and cultural differences as well as similarities could be explored, leading to better global understanding. Members of the donor family include Steven Colwell II, who graduated from the Academy in 1987; Tyler Colwell of the Class of 1991; and Christopher Colwell, a 2003 graduate.

                  Additional information about Colwell Center programs is available through the Academy’s website at www.stjohnsburyacademy.org or by contacting Glenn Ehrean, the Center’s director, by e-mail at gehrean@stjacademy.org.