Retired professor provides seed money for faculty projects
John Rogers has left the classroom—but not the students.
And although the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of geology retired in 1997 after 22 years on the Carolina faculty, he remains engaged in research, both his own and that of other UNC geologists. His health prevents him from the physical challenges of geological field work, but his mind continues to explore with vigor.
“The department has hired some remarkable faculty in the past few years,” said Rogers. “While I can’t work in the field, I can support faculty and students with dollars for equipment and research.”
Through the John and Barbara Rogers Fund for Geochemical Excellence, Rogers directs his gifts to seed funding for faculty in the department. This money helps attract even larger private and federal grants and enables undergrads and graduate students to conduct important research that otherwise would not have been possible. For example, a recent gift enabled a young faculty member to purchase a pellet press used to prepare rocks for analysis, which led to a National Science Foundation grant for a special x-ray machine to analyze geological elements in detail.
Rogers also stepped in with critical funding for assistant professor Lara Wagner, whose research in seismology and tectonics focuses on how the Blue Ridge Mountains survive the ravages of time.
“I had funds for 10 broadband seismic stations, but no money for expenses like fuel, food, and lodging. John provided this important funding, and made it possible for four undergraduates and a graduate student to help establish seven of the stations now in operation. The data from the stations will form the basis of one student’s senior thesis.”
“I am incredibly grateful to John for his continued support, both financially and intellectually,” said Wagner.
Drew Coleman, associate professor, concurs that Rogers’ gifts extend beyond the checkbook.
“John has been a tremendous supporter of undergraduate and graduate research in the department. His interests are eclectic and multidisciplinary in a climate that emphasizes specialization. He encourages a holistic view of science, mixing research approaches, research areas and even research disciplines.”
Coleman said that Rogers has been a pioneer in encouraging geological techniques toward solving archaeological problems.
“John can execute this broad approach with tremendous insight because he has such a broad background. It is not unusual to begin working on a problem with a student and dig into the literature only to find a paper written by John decades ago. He teases us regularly by noting that we are dismantling his legacy by proving everything he has written is wrong.”
Rogers, a native of Los Angeles, enrolled as a chemistry major at the venerated California Institute of Technology (because it was within driving distance of his hometown, he jokes), but switched after he took a required geology course until his geology courses began to outnumber his chemistry classes.
He earned his master’s degree at the University of Minnesota, and returned to Cal Tech in 1952 and completed his Ph.D. there in 1954. His first job was to help create the geology department with two other faculty members at Rice University in Houston.
In addition to Rogers’ abundant scientific accomplishments—seven books as author, co-author, editor, or co-editor; Fellow and Past President of the International Division of the Geological Society of America, Fellow of the Geological Society of India, and Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of Africa—he is a gifted administrator. While at Rice, he served for five years as Master of Brown College, a women’s residential college, where his responsibilities were “well, anything.” And he was once offered a job as a college president at a Northeastern school, but after a February visit to a snowy campus, he declined.
Today, Rogers lives in Durham with his wife, Barbara. The couple has two children, Tim, a newspaper editor in Wilson, N.C., and Peter, who studies wildlife conservation in Africa and is on the faculty of Paul Smith’s College in New York.
Rogers recently completed co-authoring a book for college freshmen on how human history has been influenced by earth and its processes, including climate changes and Hurricane Katrina. And his present research on the history of women's education reflects his experience at Brown College. Rogers even maintains a Facebook page.
“John actively seeks and funds students for all of his research ideas. Part of this is practical. He no longer has the physical abilities to follow through on the ideas that his mind throws at him,” said Coleman.
“The other is passion. John gets immeasurable satisfaction from working with students and watching them succeed.”
And thanks to Rogers, they can move mountains.
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Gems from John Rogers
(From an autobiographical sketch published in Gondwana Research, 2003.)
On changing majors as an undergraduate:
“It soon became clear that I would never be a laboratory chemist. In analytical lab, my measurements were inevitably wrong. In organic chemistry, that yellow compound that I was supposed to synthesize turned out to be a muddy sludge. So I became a geologist, possibly because I realized that it would be impossible even for me to harm a mountain range or a river.”
On geology as a science:
“Rice was heavily oriented toward engineering and science, and the school had resisted adding geology to the program, because many faculty members did not think it was a science. I partly agree with that assessment because much of geology is not science in the conventional, experimental, sense…
“I also realize that much of the work done by geologists makes use of physics, chemistry, and other sciences, and after I obtained tenure I told my colleagues across campus how grateful geologists were for the work done by people in the ‘supporting sciences.’”
On the Age of Aquarius:
“From 1966 to 1971, I served as Master of Brown College, one of the residential colleges for women on the Rice campus. My family and I lived in a house next door to 200 students, and my responsibilities were, well, just about anything. While I was there the Age of Aquarius (whatever that was) arrived, protests over the Vietnam War reached their peak, and both good and bad principles that had formerly ruled U.S. society seemed to break down.
Fortunately there was no e-mail at that time, but I was still bombarded with letters and phone calls from parents and other people who wanted to know why their children were, in their view, misbehaving. Also they wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I developed a generic response to most queries—something like: ‘People of all ages react to the society around them, and those of college age may be even more sensitive than others. If they see their elders, particularly those in positions of authority, acting like idiots then the students will, too. So get off my back and take care of your own business.’ This message was not always well-received.”
On field work, computers and narrow minds:
“Beginning in the 1960s, an increasing number of people decided to stay in their laboratories and, later, with their computers instead of venturing into the field. I never knew whether this was because they did not want to get hot, dirty and tired, or whether they were afraid that the real earth might be too complicated for them. I supported quantification of geologic studies and taught both thermodynamics and statistics for geologists, but I always warned my students not to follow those people whose work required them to invent ‘earths’ that were simple enough to fit inside their laboratories, their computers, and their narrow minds.”
