Ken Rasmussen joined the Northern Virginia Community College - Annandale faculty in 1992 while also a Researcher in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. He regularly teaches Physical Geology, Historical Geology, Oceanography, as well as a variety of geoscience field courses at NOVA (including field areas such as: Chesapeake Bay, Assateague and Fenwick Islands, Miocene Geology of Calvert Cliffs, Triassic Valley of NoVA, and Building Stones of the National Mall).

Ken's research interests and publications have centered on ancient records of environmental change found in marine and lacustrine (lake) sediments and rocks. His fieldwork has been both underwater and on land, in St. Croix, The Bahamas, Belize, Hungary, Italy, and the central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan; he has employed SCUBA, research submersibles, and a variety of other field/lab sedimentary, paleontological, petrographic, and geochemical techniques.

Ken has earned several awards while teaching at NOVA, including the 2011 State of Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, the 2007 John H. Moss Award for Excellence in College Teaching, the 2002 NOVA Presidential Sabbatical Award, and the 1995 Northern Virginia Community College Faculty of the Year Award.