Mark Sheridan is vice provost for graduate and postdoctoral affairs and dean of the Graduate School, a post he has held since 2013. In this role he provides leadership to the Division of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, including academic leadership to the university's interdisciplinary graduate programs, and coordination of graduate and postdoctoral education with the research and other academic activities of Texas Tech University.

Prior to joining Texas Tech, Sheridan served as associate dean of the College of Graduate and Interdisciplinary Studies at North Dakota State University (NDSU) where he provided leadership to graduate students obtaining institutional training grants, recruited and supported students with fellowships, and served development activities for the support of graduate scholarships, fellowships, and assistantships. He also served as the Director of the interdisciplinary Cellular and Molecular Biology Program. From 1999-2003, Dr. Sheridan served as the Director of North Dakota's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), during which time he led the federal-state-private sector partnership to enhance research infrastructure resulting in increased per capita federal funding in ND from 33rd to 24th in nation and over a 230% increase in success of EPSCoR-supported research for competitive grants.

Dr. Sheridan's research in the areas of comparative physiology/endocrinology (regulation of growth, development, and metabolism of animals and disruption of such processes by environmental contaminants) is nationally and internationally recognized. He has received over $30 million in grants for direct research support and research infrastructure enhancement from several funding agencies, including NIH, NSF, and USDA. He has presented and published the results of this work widely, with more than 50 invited/plenary lectures and over  140 publications. He has served as a visiting professor at several universities around the world, including in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Norway, Sweden, and Taiwan. He also serves as associate editor/editorial board member for three international journals-- Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Frontiers in Endocrinology, and International Journal of Endocrinology--and as co-editor-in-chief of General and Comparative Endocrinology.Dr. Sheridan has served in numerous leadership capacities and is recognized for his teaching and research activities. He is the immediate past chair of the Division of Comparative Endocrinology in the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) and a current council member for the International Federation of Comparative Endocrinology. He was a Fellow of the Brazil Programa de Intercãmbio Internacional em Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

He has served as a grant panelist for numerous research agencies, including DoEd, NSF, USDA, and was on the Committee of Visitors for NSF's Directorate for Biology and a member of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, US National Committee for the International Union of Biological Sciences. As a faculty member at NDSU he received citations for excellence in teaching and research, held two endowed professorships, and received the universities highest honor, the Faculty Lectureship.

A native of California, Sheridan earned a bachelor's degree in zoology and a master's degree in biology from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, and his doctoral degree in zoology from the University of California-Berkeley.