Mark is the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. He has also served in many university leadership roles, including as the chair of the Political Science Department (1995-98, 2017-18, 2023-24), associate provost for Research and Education (1998-2001), dean of the Division of the Social Sciences (2002-12), and senior advisor to President Robert J. Zimmer (2012-15). 

Mark’s scholarship and teaching focus on elections, public opinion, and congressional politics. Lately, he has immersed himself in the study of the social, economic, political, and cultural history of Chicago. He is the author of three books, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919 - 1981 (1991); Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America (1993) with Steven Rosenstone; and The City in a Garden: A Historical Guide to Hyde Park and Kenwood (2019). 

Mark has received several awards for his scholarship, including the 2009 Philip E. Converse Book Award from the American Political Science Association section on elections, public opinion, and voting behavior for Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America. In 1993-94, Mark was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He is currently a member of the Academy’s Board and its Trust and formerly a member of its Council. He was the chair or co-chair of its Committee on Studies and Publications, whose oversight includes all the Academy’s commissions and studies and the journal Daedalus, from 2007 to 2022.