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Welcome Aboard: Mark Randall, Public Relations Coordinator

The Department of Communications, Marketing, and Community Relations is pleased to welcome Mark Randall to our staff as the new public relations coordinator. Mark has worked in newspapers as an award-winning reporter for nearly 20 years and has taught history at the college level.

Mark Randall, Public Relations Coordinator

Mark Randall, Public Relations Coordinator

A native of Adams, Massachusetts—yes, he’s a Yankee—Mark comes to the College after working eight years as a reporter at The Evening Times where he covered Marion and Crittenden County.  Mark got his start in newspapers at his hometown paper, The North Adams Transcript, which ironically, he delivered as a young boy. So you could say that he has printer’s ink in his blood. After that, Mark became somewhat of a “journalist gypsy” moving around the country writing for different publications. His by-line has appeared in The New Mexico Business Weekly in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Cape Coral Daily Breeze in Cape Coral, Florida; Herald Journal in Logan, Utah; Dothan Eagle, in Dothan, Alabama; and Yuma Sun in Yuma, Arizona. He moved to northeast Arkansas in 2013 where he worked at The Sun in Jonesboro covering business, and The Poinsett County Democrat Tribune in Trumann, after which he took a break from journalism to work on his master’s.

In 2011, Mark earned his master’s degree in history from Arkansas State University (ASU) where he worked as an adjunct faculty teaching United States History to 1877 and United States History Since 1877 courses at the undergraduate level. He also worked in the university’s Distance Education Department and the Faculty Center. Mark also has a master’s degree from Syracuse University in broadcast journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications (1998), and a bachelor’s in history from Northeastern University (1993) in Boston, Massachusetts, and has earned graduate credits in history and political science at Harvard Extension School.

Mark also is the author of peer reviewed journal articles about baseball which have been published by the Society for American Baseball Research in its Baseball Research Journal, and Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies by Arkansas State University. He remains active in the world of academia giving papers at Arkansas Historical Association conferences and the Delta Symposium at Arkansas State University where he lectures about Elvis, Sun Records, and the history of early Rock n’ Roll. Mark also works with the City of Marion in Arkansas to help build the Sultana Disaster Museum.

A history buff who loves going “ruin running” at different battlefields and museums of all kinds, Mark is also a classic movie buff who collects vintage movie posters and loves John Wayne. He still reads comic books and will debate you about who is the better superhero—Batman or Superman—or whether Marvel or DC is better. Mark has a beagle and two cats who he lives with in Trumann, Arkansas. He is delighted to be at Southwest and would love for you to drop him a line and say hello at mrandall3@southwest.tn.edu.

Welcome aboard, Mark!