Institute Faculty and Staff
(Ret) Col. Rich Mifsud Ed.D Fort Campbell Campus |
Dr. Richard Mifsud is the Director for the Institute for National Security and Military
Studies at Austin Peay State University. He served as a reserve and National Guard
Infantry Officer from 1991 to 2021, retiring as an Infantry Brigade Combat Team Commander.
COL (ret.) Mifsud is the Institute’s in-house military strategist as his experience
includes multiple overseas deployments, numerous civil support operations, information
operations, special expertise in the National Guard’s State Partnership Program with
US security partnerships in Eastern Europe, and significant Joint Assignments and
Security Cooperation activities at the Combatant Command level. In addition, he has
over twenty years of experience at the federal, state, and local level in emergency
and disaster response operations. He received his Doctorate of Education in Organizational
Change and Leadership from the University of Southern California; has a master’s degree
in Leadership from the University of Southern California; a master’s degree in Strategic
Studies from the US Army War College, and a master’s degree in Emergency and Disaster
Management from Trident University. He is the father of two successful daughters and
a new resident to Tennessee.
Dr. Erin Rowland Carlin Fort Campbell Campus |
Dr. Erin Rowland Carlin is joining the Criminal Justice Department as an Assistant
Professor and as a faculty member under the Institute for National Security and Military
Studies. She recently graduated with her Ph.D. in Political Science from UT-Knoxville
while teaching political science and public administration courses at Eastern Illinois
University. While she is new to the Clarksville area, Dr. Carlin is a Tennessee native
and spent several years attending school and working in the Nashville-Murfreesboro
area. Her husband Brian is also an APSU alumnus, and they are excited for their son
Beckett to be raised as a Governor. Dr. Carlin’s research interests include Mass Shooting
Incidents, Peace Mediation, Domestic and Global Security, Emergency Management, Public
Policy, and Nuclear Security.
Dr. Rudy B Baker Fort Campbell Campus |
Roozbeh (Rudy) B. Baker received his legal education at the University of Illinois
(JD) and the University of California at Berkeley (LLM), and completed his training
as a Political Scientist at the University of Southern California (PhD). Before joining
the faculty at Austin Peay State University, Dr. Baker worked at the University of
Surrey (School of Law) in the United Kingdom. Dr. Baker's areas of expertise center
mainly upon courts & judicial politics in a comparative context; international law
/ international criminal law; comparative constitutional and criminal law; socio-legal
studies; democratic transitions; and multi-method research design. Dr. Baker's current
research focuses upon the role of transnational epistemic communities in international
and domestic norm formation. Dr. Baker has published in leading Law Reviews and Social
Science Journals. He has held adjunct / visiting appointments in the United States
at Pepperdine University (School of Law), in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the University
of East Sarajevo (Faculty of Law), and in Serbia at Union University (Faculty of Law).
He has also served as a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Comparative Law
in Serbia, and the Institute of International Politics & Economics in Serbia. Outside
of academia, Dr. Baker has worked on constitutional / criminal law issues in the Senate
of Canada (Opposition Research Office, Progressive-Conservative Party); war crimes
/ organized crime issues in the U.S. Embassy – Serbia (U.S. Department of Justice
Resident Legal Advisor's Office); and WMD counter-proliferation issues in the U.S.
Department of Defense (Defense Intelligence Agency). In addition to the English language,
Dr. Baker speaks Persian / Farsi, Serbo-Croatian, and some French.
Dr. Simon Rotzer Fort Campbell Campus |
Dr. Simon Rotzer is an Assistant Professor for the Department of Criminal Justice
and a member of the Institute for National Security and Military Studies. He received
his Ph.D. in International Relations and Comparative Politics at the University of
Tennessee Knoxville. His research is focused on Civil-Military Relations. Specifically,
he concentrates on the interactions and communications by and between the government,
the public, and the military, and the consequences of such interactions on society,
the state, and international security.