Rita Balaban is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Economics at UNC-Chapel Hill where she has been a faculty member since 2006. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh in 1999 and prior to her arrival at UNC-CH, she taught at Samford University and the College of Charleston. Rita is an experienced teacher whose teaching interests are in Applied Microeconomics, specifically the Economics of Sports. She has won several university-wide teaching awards including the Chapman Family Award (201) and the Tanner Award (2015) for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Her research interests are in economics pedagogy and she has presented her work at conferences in Wilmington, Philadelphia and San Diego.