Lorene Lane Rogers, who earned a bachelor's degree in English from North Texas, served as president of the University of Texas at Austin from 1974 to 1979, the first female in the country to head a major university and the only female in that role in UT's -year history. As UT's fifteenth president, she broke a -year jinx by becoming the first not to be fired. She met her husband, Burl Gordon Rogers (UNT BS—chemistry '35) while attending North Texas and married him in 1935. Burl went on to earn a PhD in chemistry from UT in 1940, and thereafter, in 1941, moved to Westfield, New Jersey, for his new job at General Aniline Works in Linden. But on June 19 of that year, Burl died from burns after a mixture of chemicals flared in a laboratory at work a week earlier. In honor of Burl, Lorene gave money to UT for a scholarship in 1996, and in turn, the UT Board of Regents established the Burl Gordon Rogers Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Chemistry.