Rodger Randle was born in Tulsa. His maternal family came to Oklahoma in the Land Run of 1889 and his father’s family emigrated to Tulsa from the hills of Arkansas.

He is a graduate of Tulsa Public Schools, and is a member of the inaugural class of the Will Rogers High School Hall of Fame. His undergraduate degree in political socience is from the University of Oklahoma, and he earned a doctor of laws degree from the University of Tulsa. He is a member of the University of Tulsa chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a national academic honor society.

Prof. Randle began his career in public service with the Peace Corps in Brazil in the mid-1960's where he served in a community development project in the city of Recife in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.

In 1970, at the age of 27, he was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives. He was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1972, then reelected in 1976, 1980 and 1984. He was twice elected President Pro Tempore of the State Senate (the Senate's top leadership position), and prior to that he served as Chairman of the Senate Education Committee and the Senate Apprpriations and Budget Committee.

In 1988, he became Mayor of the City of Tulsa and led the successful campaign to change the city's form of government. The resounding "yes" vote came after four unsuccessful charter change attempts during the previous 35 years. He was reelected in 1990 by the largest margin in Tulsa’s history, becoming Tulsa's first mayor under the new MayorCity Council form of government. The adoption of the new form of government marked the most significant change in the City of Tulsa in the last 50 years.

In 1992 he left the office of Mayor to accept an appointment as president of the University Center at Tulsa, which later became Rogers University. When Rogers University was reorganized in 1998 and its headquarters was moved to the Claremore, Randle opted to remain in his hometown and accepted a position as Professor in the Graduate College of the University of Oklahoma on the Tulsa campus.

Rodger Randle has participated in a large variety of civic activities on the local, state, and national levels and has received many awards for his civic contributions. On the national level, he is the past president and chairman of Sister Cities International, the world's largest volunteer citizen diplomacy program (and he continues to serve Sister Cities International in various roles). At the state level, he has served as chair of the Oklahoma Municipal League and as chair of the Oklahoma Academy of State Goals (a statewide nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that conducts studies and issues recommendations concerning public policy in Oklahoma, one of the strongest and most successful organizations of its kind in the United States). In Tulsa he is a past President of the Tulsa Global Alliance (the organization that operates Tulsa's Sister City program and the International Visitors Programs), he is a past chairman of the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations and is a past president of the United Nations Association of Northeastern Oklahoma. In the arts, he is past chair of the Tulsa Philharmonic and is past chair of the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust.

He is the British Honorary Consul in Oklahoma, a post he has held for over twenty years.

In addition to lectuaring in the United States, he has lectured in the United Kingdom, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Spain, Germany, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, and the Philippines.

He speaks Portuguese and Spanish.