Martin, Tennessee
I build the systems that make teaching and learning work at scale.
I am a political scientist who studies why institutions succeed or fail under pressure, and an administrator who applies that same question inside one. My work sits where faculty development, assessment infrastructure, AI strategy, and rural economic development meet. The through line is simple: institutions are only as good as the systems people actually use.
- Associate ProfessorPolitical Science and Global Studies, UT Martin
- Inaugural DirectorCenter for Teaching and Learning, UT Martin
- Founding FellowCenter for Rural Innovation
- ChairUT Educational Development Network
- Education AmbassadorCouncil on Foreign Relations
Recognition
2026 UT System President’s Award
United and Connected. The highest honor a faculty or staff member can receive across the University of Tennessee System.
Selected by the Office of Academic Affairs to represent UT Martin research contributions, fall 2025.
Founding Fellow, Tennessee Leaders Fellows Academy
One of twelve senior leaders elected across West Tennessee higher education, industry, and government.
Competitive grant funding
Including the UT System Grand Challenge Grant, Ford BlueOval City focus group research, and the AWP Giving Circle Grant with Dr. Carrie Humphreys.
Hardy Graham Distinguished Faculty Professorship
Held 2022 to 2025. Preceded by college awards for Outstanding Intellectual Contribution (2024), Outstanding Teaching (2023), and Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2021).
The Record
What the last few years actually look like
Building a center, publishing the research, and doing the regional work happened at the same time and fed each other. Here is the sequence.
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UT System President’s Award, United and Connected
One of fourteen recipients systemwide, recognized for work that connects the university to the communities it serves.
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Founding Fellow, Tennessee Leaders Fellows Academy
Completed the Porter Development Initiative Leaders Academy at Vanderbilt’s Owen School, earning Charter Fellowship and Distinguished Achievement designation. WBBJ coverage
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Applied AI Certification in design for a Spring 2027 launch at UT Martin
A credential program being built from the ground up to give students and incumbent workers practical, assessable AI fluency rather than tool familiarity.
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Chair, University of Tennessee Educational Development Network
Coordinating faculty development strategy across UT System campuses, including the SoTL Studio co-hosted with UT Southern.
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Field research in Bangladesh
“Sins of the Father,” examining inherited political legitimacy and bureaucratic continuity in South Asian democratic transitions.
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Named Featured Faculty Scholar
A program running since 1996 with sixty honorees total, recognizing sustained research contribution at UT Martin.
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Published on AI and assessment design in political science
“Adapting to AI: Transforming assignment design and assessment practices in political science general education,” Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching.
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UT System Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Retreat
Representing UT Martin alongside SoTL leadership from Knoxville and the Health Science Center.
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Won the UT System Grand Challenge Grant
Rural workforce development across a 20-county pipeline. Grew the program from 20 students spread across three UT campuses to 15 placements based entirely at UT Martin, and built the Center for Rural Innovation around it.
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Appointed inaugural Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning
Took over on December 1, 2024 and built the center from the ground up. It now carries faculty development, assessment infrastructure, institutional effectiveness, and campus AI strategy.
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Named a Council on Foreign Relations Education Ambassador
For the 2024 to 2025 term, the first from the University of Tennessee System.
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Led equitable growth research for Ford’s BlueOval City
Designed and directed the focus group research, staffed by five undergraduate political science majors, that informed the project’s Good Neighbor Plan for West Tennessee.
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Outstanding Intellectual Contribution, College of Business and Global Affairs
Recognizing research productivity and scholarly impact.
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Department of Political Science and Global Studies established
Part of the faculty group that stood up the new department and navigated its transition between colleges.
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Published Sabotage with Lexington Books
The culmination of fieldwork in Pakistan, Taiwan, and Turkey on why bureaucratic quality and institutional autonomy determine whether states hold together.
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Outstanding Teaching Award, College of Business and Global Affairs
Following Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2021.
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Awarded the Hardy Graham Distinguished Faculty Professorship
Held through 2025.
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Founded UT Martin’s Global Affairs Forum
The inaugural forum filled the hall past capacity, establishing an ongoing venue for the campus and the region to work through international issues together.
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International development practice
Earlier work with USAID, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank across Asia and Africa, in survey design, program design, and evidence-based evaluation.
Practice
Three rooms, one question
Whether the room holds faculty, students, or a city council, the question is the same: what system would actually make this work, and who has to own it?
01 / Institutional
Teaching and learning leadership
I built UT Martin’s Center for Teaching and Learning from an empty office. It now runs 13 programs, has engaged 156 unique faculty across all five colleges, and holds 44 repeat participants. It carries faculty development, assessment infrastructure, institutional effectiveness, and the campus AI strategy.
- Faculty development program design and delivery
- Assessment and institutional effectiveness systems
- Campus-wide AI integration policy and training
- Advisor training and onboarding pathways
- Micro-grant programs and internal funding design
02 / Scholarly
Research on AI, cognition, and governance
My current work asks whether AI assists learning or replaces it, and what institutional posture decides which one you get. It is grounded in a rural campus, which is where the stakes are highest and the research is thinnest.
- Bifurcation of intelligence: assistance versus replacement
- Knowledge layering as a teaching framework
- Comparative bureaucratic governance and democratization
- Indo-Pacific foreign policy and small-state strategy
03 / Regional
Community and economic development
Rural West Tennessee is not a case study to me, it is where I work. I design the research that lets communities make decisions with evidence instead of assumption.
- Community needs assessment and survey instrument design
- Strategic visioning and public engagement facilitation
- Workforce development and credential pathway design
- K-12 and district professional development
- Focus group research and narrative auditing
Scholarship
The book, and the work around it
Lexington Books, 2023
Sabotage: Lessons in Bureaucratic Governance from Pakistan, Taiwan, and Turkey
ISBN 978-1-6669-0175-7
How does a state keep delivering public services while its politics fall apart? Drawing on fieldwork and interviews across three countries, I argue that the answer is a high-quality bureaucracy with real institutional autonomy, and that neither one alone is enough. Taiwan shows bureaucracy facilitating democratization. Turkey shows backsliding built on gutting bureaucratic competence. Pakistan shows a bureaucracy protecting itself by sabotaging reform.
“Rasool argues that existing analyses of regime instability myopically focus on conflicts between politicians and generals,” wrote Andrew Wedeman of Georgia State University, calling the redefinition of the debate insightful.
Selected peer-reviewed work
- 2026 Rasool, A. & Humphreys, C. Strong Foundations: A Holistic Approach to Political Science Career Preparation. Journal of Political Science Education, 22(1).
- 2025 Rasool, A. Adapting to AI: Transforming Assignment Design and Assessment Practices in Political Science. Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, 10(2).
- 2023 Rasool, A. Sabotage: Lessons in Bureaucratic Governance from Pakistan, Taiwan, and Turkey. Lexington Books.
- 2023 Rasool, A. Taiwan is Reinventing How Diplomacy Works. The Diplomat. DOI
- 2022 Rasool, A. & Humphreys, C. Tuning in to Student Learning: The Music of International Relations Theory. Journal of Political Science Education, 18(4), 523–535. DOI
- 2022 Rasool, A. & Ruggiero, C. The Case for Smart Diplomacy: Evidence from Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy. Asian Politics & Policy, 14(3), 388–402. DOI
- 2022 Rasool, A. Belt and Road Initiative’s Regional Impact: Lessons from South Asia. Journal of Indian and Asian Studies, 3(1). DOI
- Chapter Rasool, A., Meier, A. & Russell, A. Mental Health and the Job Market. In Strategies for Navigating Graduate School and Beyond. American Political Science Association.
Find Me
Everything else lives somewhere better maintained
This page is the index. These are the places where the work is kept current.
Institutional
Professional
Contact
Get in touch
I read everything that comes in and I answer. If you are writing about a talk, a project, or a collaboration, tell me the audience and the constraint you are working against. That is usually the fastest way for me to be useful.
arasool1@utm.eduWhat people usually ask about
- Speaking and workshopsAI in the classroom, assessment design, faculty development, and rural higher education.
- ConsultingNeeds assessment, survey design, strategic visioning, and workforce pathway development.
- MediaAsian politics, bureaucracy and democratization, and AI in higher education.
- Research collaborationScholarship of teaching and learning, AI and cognition, comparative governance.