Lorene Rogers dies at 94; former University of Texas president
Lorene L. Rogers, who served as president of the University of Texas in the 1970s and was believed to be the first woman to head a public university in the United States, died Jan. 11 at an assisted living facility in Dallas. She was 94.
A niece, Donna O’Dell, told the Austin American-Statesman that Rogers had broken her leg in October and never fully recovered.
Trained as a biochemist at a time when the field was dominated by men, Rogers was named interim head of the Austin campus of the nine-campussystem in 1974. A year later she drew national attention when she was named president, a position she held until 1979.
Protests erupted after her appointment, mainly fueled by the fact that a student-faculty committee, which preferred other candidates, had recommended she not be named president. News accounts at the time suggested that she was viewed by some as a poor administrator who made decisions slowly.
The university’s current president, William Powers Jr., said in a statement that Rogers accepted the position “under difficult circumstances [and] was not afraid to make tough decisions.”
Rogers was born in Prosper, Texas, on April 3, 1914, and earned a bachelor’s degree in English at what is now the University of North Texas. While at the university, she met her future husband, Burl Rogers, a biochemist.
The couple had been married only two years when they moved to New Jersey, where he found a position at a chemical company and she worked as a schoolteacher. At 27, she was widowed when her husband was killed in a laboratory explosion.
She returned to school and earned a master’s degree and a doctorate at the University of Texas.
After teaching at Sam Houston State, she eventually returned to the University of Texas as a researcher and, though a qualified instructor in chemistry, was refused a teaching position.
She was hired as a nutrition professor in the home economics department and later became a full professor, steadily rising through the ranks as assistant director of the biochemical institute, associate dean of graduate studies and vice president of the university.
Rogers, who had no children, is survived by a sister, Beulah Conatser of Dallas.
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