J. Daniel Chi, chair of the Department of Finance at UNLV's Lee School of Business, has been named the 2026 recipient of the UNLV Alumni Association's Outstanding Faculty Award, recognizing his sustained commitment to student success and financial literacy education.
Chi, who joined UNLV as an assistant professor of finance in 2011, has become known for an educational philosophy that extends far beyond traditional classroom instruction. Central to his mission is addressing what he calls a "financial education gap" affecting young adults—the disconnect between years spent building professional skills and minimal instruction on personal money management.
"From birth to college, we spend about two decades educating students to become professionals," Chi said in an interview. "Yet we have taught them very little on how to manage money: how to budget, how to spend, how to save, how to invest."
Since becoming Finance Department chair in spring 2022, Chi has spearheaded multiple initiatives aimed at closing that gap. He developed a financial literacy curriculum open to the entire UNLV student body, highlighted by two lower-division undergraduate courses that map financial health fundamentals. Thousands of students have completed these courses over the past several years.
Beyond campus, Chi extended similar programming to Southern Nevada high schools, offering dual credit—students who complete the program earn UNLV credit before college.
Chi also helped launch the UNLV President's Investment Challenge, an investment competition open to all students. The inaugural event drew more than 200 students representing over 80 teams, providing hands-on experience in portfolio management, risk assessment, and decision-making while connecting participants with faculty, financial industry professionals, and alumni.
Another signature program under his leadership is Rebels on Wall Street, an annual week-long immersion trip to New York City where select UNLV students visit leading financial institutions and learn from finance professionals, including alumni working in the field.
"Classroom learning is only part of the education equation," Chi said. "Experiential learning is another essential component. It is through experiential learning that students put theory to work."
Chi's impact extends to departmental and university-wide initiatives. He supported creation of UNLV's Kerestesi Center for Insurance and Risk Management and a new Insurance and Risk Management major that launched in fall 2025—one of few such programs in the western United States. The Department of Finance is also participating in a multi-institutional study on college personal finance education with Stanford University and other partners, contributing a major student dataset that helps shape national conversations about financial literacy.
His scholarship has been recognized with multiple Best Paper Award nominations at Financial Management Association International conferences. Chi has served as keynote speaker at the 2025 International Conference on Financial Risk and Corporate Finance Management and frequently appears as a media source on finance topics, raising UNLV's public visibility.
Under Chi's leadership, total enrollment in finance classes has more than tripled since spring 2022 through fall 2026.
"Daniel has built a career as a respected finance scholar, an effective teacher, a department leader, a program builder, and a public-facing educator whose work now reaches students, faculty, industry partners, high school students, and the broader Nevada community," said John Starkey, associate director of the Kerestesi Center for Insurance and Risk Management. "His service reflects the best of UNLV: practical, ambitious, student-centered, community-minded, and built for long-term impact."
Chi immigrated to the United States nearly three decades ago to pursue an MBA at Idaho State University. After earning his Ph.D. in finance from Texas A&M, he spent six years teaching at North Dakota State and Arizona State before joining UNLV, where he said he found an immediate "perfect match."
This year, Chi was appointed to the Nevada Advisory Council for Financial Literacy.