Lorene Rogers

Lorene Lane Rogers (April 3, 1914 – January 11, 2009) was an American biochemist and educator who served as the 21st President of the University of Texas at Austin. She has been described as the first woman in the United States to lead a major research university.

Early life and education Born on April 3, 1914, in Prosper, Texas, as Lorene Lane, she was awarded a bachelor's degree from North Texas State Teachers College (now the University of North Texas), majoring in English. She met her husband, Burl Gordon Rogers, while an undergraduate. After graduating from North Texas, Rogers became a school teacher. Her husband, Burl Rogers, was a chemist. He had graduated from the University of North Texas in 1935 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and taught at the University of Texas until about 1940. Around that time, he accepted a job from a chemical company, General Aniline Works, in Linden, New Jersey, where, in 1941, he died from injuries of a laboratory explosion.

At a time when biochemistry was a "field dominated by men", Rogers decided to follow in her husband's footsteps, figuring that "if he liked chemistry so well, that she wanted to pursue it also." She earned a master's degree and a doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin and taught at Sam Houston State College (now Sam Houston State University) before returning to Austin, Texas. She became president in 1975, and was variously described as the first woman to be president of a major state university or was believed to be the first. Faculty members were critical of the appointment, claiming that they should have been involved in the selection process, and protest rallies were conducted by faculty and students demanding that she resign. President Rogers and the Board of Regents were the target of a 1975 lawsuit filed by Philip L. White and seven other UT Austin professors, who claimed that they had been denied raises as part of an effort to stifle their dissent, in violation of the First Amendment rights. She served as president of the university until 1979.

Rogers died at age 94 on January 11, 2009, of natural causes in Dallas.