Dr Neil Hair is the Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at RIT, and Professor of Marketing at the Saunders College of Business. He holds Chartered Marketer Status from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a PhD from Cranfield as well as degrees from Sheffield and Cardiff Business Schools in the UK. His research and consulting activities include understanding perceptions of advertising and customer value in popular online social networks, personal branding in virtual space, virtual ethnography in popular worlds, and currently research on perceptions of students’ effective learning environments. Dr Hair is also passionate about his role as a facilitator and has been awarded five of RIT's teaching awards for excellence including; The Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006, the Exemplary Online Faculty Award in 2008, RIT’s Executive MBA Faculty Recognition Award in 2012, RIT's highest teaching honor, The Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching in 2011, and the Saunders Alumni Teaching Excellence Award in 2014. He was awarded Fellow status of the Chartered Institute of marketing in 2017 based on an external peer evaluation of establishing the Innovative Learning Institute at RIT (The current center’s former incarnation) and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority in the UK. His teaching interests have involved developing the world's first program on the commercialization of virtual worlds, creating immersive online student learning experiences, and using local Client Consultancy Projects as authentic assignments for his marketing students.