Mark Rom

Dr. Mark Carl Rom is Associate Professor of Government and Public Policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Department of Government.

Photo of Mark Rom

His recent research has focused on assessing student participation, improving grading accuracy, reducing grading bias, and improving data visualizations. Previously, Rom has explored critiques and conversations within the realm of political science through symposia on academic conferences, ideology in the classroom, and ideology within the discipline.


Rom continues to fuel his commitment to educational equity by serving on the AP Higher Education Advisory Committee, the Executive Board of the Political Science Education section, and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Political Science Education. 


Prior to joining McCourt, Rom served as a legislative assistant for the Honorable John Paul Hammerschmidt of the US House of Representatives, as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, as a senior evaluator at the US General Accounting Office, and as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation, The Thrift Tragedy: Are Politicians and Bureaucrats to Blame?, was the co-winner of the 1993 Harold Lasswell Award from the American Political Science Association as the best dissertation in the public policy field. Rom received his B.A. from the University of Arkansas (magna cum laude) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1992.   


Prior to his professional career Mark worked as a janitor, a field hand, a waiter, a ticket-taker, a library clerk, a gas station attendant, an assembly-line laborer, and a backpacking guide, among other odd jobs.