Faculty & Research
Tad Hara
Tad Hara (MPS’91, MS Regional Science ’03, PhD ’04) is
an Associate Dean of Finance and Administration at Rosen College of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida.
[Professional Background]
Dr. Hara spent 17 years with the Industrial Bank of
Japan (IBJ: currently Mizuho Corporate Bank) as a senior manager & unit head of over 30 staffs, in charge of M & A, project financing and corporate financing for hospitality sectors with a loan portfolio exceeding US$300 million. Dr. Hara served twice as a diplomat specialized in the Middle Eastern affairs, first assigned to Japanese Embassy in Egypt in 1980 and second as an assistant director of Multilateral Peace Process at the Near Eastern Bureau of Japanese Foreign Ministry in 1999. Before joining the Rosen College in 2005, he was teaching quantitative tourism industry analysis course, emphasizing Input-Output/Social Accounting Matrix (I-O/SAM) & Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA) at School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University where he also worked as a research fellow at Center for Hospitality Research.
[Research Aspirations]
While Dr. Hara has been involved with acquisitions, international debt syndication, real estate finance, feasibility studies and risk analysis during banking tenure, his lifetime interests have been in the area of international conflict resolution, economic impact analysis of hospitality and tourism, poverty alleviation and sustainable economic development. He is particularly interested in modeling (showing with hard numbers) how the economic impact of tourism as an industry can mitigate broader social problems of the world, including poverty, inequality, conflicts, environmental impact and terrorism. His direct exposures to global issues as a banker & diplomat for twenty years prior to his academic career consistently underscore his strong multidisciplinary aspirations to his research. He has over 130 publications, including 30 refereed publications and over 80 presentations, including 30+ peer-reviewed ones since he joined academic field.
He is the single author of "Quantitative Tourism Industry Analysis - Introduction to I-O/SAM modeling and Tourism Satellite Accounts" by Elsevier (2008).
[Educational Qualifications]
He received PhD, M.S in Regional Science, and MPS in Hotel Administration from Cornell University, NY, USA, MBA from University of Glamorgan, Wales, UK, and B.S in Law from Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.
[Academic Membership]
He is a member of Regional Science Association International (RSAI), Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), Applied Regional Science Conference-Japan (ARSC) and I-CHRIE. He is the recipient of the Sage Publication Best Paper Award in the 8th Graduate Conference in Hospitality and Tourism during his PhD candidacy at Cornell University. He is also a life-time member of the senior managers’ club of the Industrial Bank of Japan.
[Local and Global Community Services]
He has been appointed to serve the needs of both local community (Treasurer, Preservation of Eatonville Community, which hosts annual Zora Festival in Eatonville, the oldest African-American Incorporated town in the USA) and global community (Advisory Committee Member for International Trends Research on Tourism Statistics, Japan Tourism Agency, Government of Japan; a representative member of Japan to a Technical Advisory Board, Tourism Statistics and TSA, UN World Tourism Organization; external Consultant to Themis of UNWTO, for education and research on tourism statistics and TSA). He taught courses at Lausanne Hotel School, Switzerland, Waseda University, Japan, and currently supervising PhD students at his College, at School of Hotel and Tourism Management at HK Polytechnic and Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies at Waseda University, Japan. He is one of the authorized faculty members to teach with full distant learning platform utilizing streaming videos.