Mark Orsag
Professor
Phone Number: 402.826.8219Department: History
Office: GA211
Email: [email protected]
Primary Campus: Crete
Credentials: BA, MA, PHD
About
Personal-- Dr. Orsag currently holds the title of Professor of European and Interdisciplinary History at Doane University. He and his wife Dr. Rebecca Word-Orsag, who works in the Omaha Public School system as a School Psychologist, reside in Gretna, Nebraska. Mark is an avid technical rock climber (climbing outdoors mostly in South Dakota, Nevada and Arkansas and participating in indoor bouldering and sport climbing competitions). He has also done numerous alpine/mountaineering ascents in Colorado and Wyoming.
Education, Teaching and Service-- Dr. Orsag received his BA from Carnegie-Mellon University, his MA from the Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. in European History from Michigan State University. In addition to the two Western Civilization survey courses, Dr. Orsag teaches or has taught upper-division courses on Asian, Roman, Russian, British, French, German, Indian, Interdisciplinary, World and Military history. He also has taught or teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses online (through Doane's Open Learning Academy) and participates in Doane's Ed.D. program, both as a committee member and chair. Since coming to Doane University in 1998-1999, Dr. Orsag has been awarded the Doane University Student Congress Teaching Award three times (2002-2003, 2008-2009, and 2012-2013). His IDEA teacher/course evaluation scores are very consistently in the highest Excellent Teacher/Excellent Course range. He has served as Honors Program Director, History Department Chair, Social Science Division Chair and as the manager of four significant academic projects at Doane University between 2007 and 2023.
Scholarship-- Dr. Orsag has a total of over 80 completed or forthcoming academic publications/presentations. His latest research projects have involved interdisciplinary topics mixing history and the hard sciences. A number of these efforts are the results of collaboration with former and current Doane University colleagues Dr. Amanda McKinney, MD and/or Dr. Andrea Holmes (Professor of Chemistry). Interdisciplinary research, involving Dr. McKinney and Professor of Biology Dr. DeeAnn M. Reeder (Bucknell University and the Smithsonian), focused on a 3rd Century Ancient Roman pandemic, the Plague of Cyprian. The resulting monograph Interdisciplinary Insights from the Plague of Cyprian: Pathology, Epidemiology, Ecology and History (also available here) was initially published by Palgrave-Macmillan in April 2023 in hardcopy and e-book editions. The book has since also been published in paperback and PDF versions. The three co-authors presented a seminar on the subject of ancient zoonotic viral pandemics at the UNL School of Virology in August, 2025. In 2025-2026, Dr. Orsag and Dr. Giovanni Meledandri of Guglielmo Marconi University (Rome, Italy) published or will publish two interdisciplinary articles in the SCOPUS-indexed journal Zoonotic Diseases. Four co-authored chapters in the edited volume Understanding Planetary Limits (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026) were the result of interdisciplinary collaboration with Dr. Amanda McKinney, Dr. Daniel Hoyer (University of Toronto) and other scholars.
A 2025 article that appeared in the Journal of Applied History, also co-authored with Amanda McKinney, dealt with a comparison of ancient Roman imperial and modern global realities and challenges through the prism of complex systems theory. Working under the leadership of Dr. Andrea Holmes, Mark also participated (both as editor and a contributing author) in the publication of two textbooks Cannabis, a Comprehensive Overview (Volumes I and II). This textbook project involved, at various stages, a total of ten faculty from three different universities as well as scientific specialists from private industry. In January 2025, Dr. Orsag's interdisciplinary research was nationally recognized by the American Historical Association’s newsmagazine Perspectives as helping to broaden the definition of the discipline of history. In 2025 and 2026, Dr. Orsag was chosen as a peer reviewer for the MDPI Journals Group, Academia Health and Medicine and the Metascience Unit of the government of the United Kingdom. In 2026, he also served as a historical consultant for the French documentary filmmaker Pernel Media for a forthcoming documentary on the Fall of the Roman Empire that includes a segment on the Plague of Cyprian. In recent years, Dr. Orsag has also often served as a presenter for UNL's Osher Institute.