Mark David Van Ells was born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin on November 21, 1962. He attended local schools and graduated from Lincoln High School in 1981. Later that year he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He served for over four years as a physical therapy technician at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona and Lindsay Air Station, Germany.
Upon discharge in 1986 Van Ells enrolled at the University of Massachusetts. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Wisconsin where he received his bachelors (1990) and master's degrees (1992), as well as his Ph.D. (1999) in American history. His dissertation was titled 'To Hear Only Thunder Again': The Readjustment of World War II Veterans to Civilian Life in Wisconsin.
During his studies, he worked as an historian and archivist at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. He assisted in the museum's major redevelopment in 1993 and performed hundreds of interviews for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Project. He was also instrumental in establishing the museum's Veterans Memorial Database.
In 1999 he was hired as a professor at Queensborough Community College in New York, where he teaches courses on American, military, and Southeast Asian history.
