Faculty Fellow in Business

Rick Mislan, is a proud alumnus of Rochester Institute of Technology, and a faculty member in the Saunders College of Business, where his teaching focuses on helping students learn by building, investigating, making decisions, and solving real-world business problems. He currently teaches courses including Building a Web Business and Systems Analysis and Design, bringing together technology, entrepreneurship, business analysis, design, and strategy in highly applied learning environments.

A central theme of Rick’s teaching is the creation of immersive, simulation-based learning experiences that move students beyond traditional lectures and case studies. In his courses, students operate as consultants, entrepreneurs, analysts, and decision-makers inside realistic business scenarios. These simulations incorporate fictional companies, clients, stakeholders, websites, business records, datasets, project artifacts, communications, and evolving problems that require students to gather evidence, ask questions, work with ambiguity, and defend their recommendations. Rather than simply studying how organizations work, students experience many of the challenges they would encounter working within or advising one.

Rick is also exploring how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies can expand experiential learning. His recent course development examines how AI can support dynamic client interactions, individualized feedback, scenario development, and responsive simulations while preserving the critical thinking, judgment, collaboration, and communication that students need to develop themselves. His broader interest is in designing learning environments in which technology makes the educational experience more authentic rather than simply more automated.

Rick brings an unusually broad professional perspective to this work, combining decades of teaching with experience as an entrepreneur, consultant, designer, researcher, and technology executive. That experience informs a teaching philosophy centered on experimentation, iteration, and learning through doing. He is particularly interested in working with faculty across RIT to explore simulation-based learning, experiential course design, AI-supported teaching, and new approaches for bringing authentic professional decision-making into the classroom.

Rick also has deep roots at RIT. As a student, he helped give RIT’s tiger mascot the name “RITchie” in 1989 and, decades later, co-authored a children’s book about RITchie with his daughters. We are delighted to welcome Rick to the Center for Teaching and Learning and look forward to the creativity, experimentation, and faculty collaboration he will bring to the Faculty Fellow role.

Key Areas of Expertise: Simulation-Based and Immersive Learning; Experiential and Project-Based Learning; Authentic Assessment; Real-World Problem Solving; AI-Enhanced Learning Environments; Entrepreneurial Learning; Interdisciplinary Course Design; Student-Centered Learning; Instructional Technology.

Contact Rick Mislan to discuss your teaching.