Dr. Carman joined the SUNY Plattsburgh Department of Political Science in Fall 2014, and has served as chair of the department since Fall 2024. Previously, from Fall 2010 to Spring 2014, he was a Visiting Instructor of Political Science at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa. Dr. Carman earned his Ph.D. from Binghamton University. His teaching and research interests include the constitution, courts, judges, and the law. In 2025, Dr. Carman received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service.

Dr. Carman’s book, Making Good Law or Good Policy?: The Causes and Effects of State Supreme Court Judges’ Role Orientations, draws from political science and social psychology in order to examine the effect that judicial role orientations — or judges’ beliefs about what should properly be allowed to influence their decisions — has on judicial decision-making. Data for the project, in part, comes from a nationwide survey of the entire population of state supreme court judges. Beyond his peer-reviewed work, Dr. Carman is committed to public scholarship, regularly sharing his expertise with audiences beyond the academy, in the conviction that political scientists have an important responsibility to bring their scholarly expertise to wider publics and to inform public understanding of government, politics, and law.

Beyond his teaching and research, Dr. Carman has a sustained record of service at the department, school, university, and systemwide level. He served on the General Education Committee for six years (2015–2021), during which he helped create SUNY Plattsburgh’s general education program, the Cardinal Core Curriculum; pass the program through the Faculty Senate; and implement it. Dr. Carman represented the political science department in the SUNY Plattsburgh Faculty Senate from 2015 to 2021, and served on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee from 2017 to 2023 — as secretary from 2017 to 2020, as additional member from 2020 to 2021, and as chair from 2021 to 2023. As chair, he focused on supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion at SUNY Plattsburgh and in the Plattsburgh community; addressing faculty and staff morale; and advocating for balanced and equitable workloads — priorities the Senate advanced during his tenure. In 2026, Dr. Carman was elected Presiding Officer of the SUNY Plattsburgh Faculty, a role that — like the Faculty Senate chairship before it — includes serving as a Campus Governance Leader to the SUNY University Faculty Senate, the second time he has held that systemwide position. He founded and co-organizes the Plattsburgh Public Library’s Experts Explain It All speaker series. Dr. Carman is regularly sought out by regional media as an expert commentator on the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court, and has served as chair or member of numerous committees, councils, steering committees, task forces, and working groups.