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Roger Koerner: His time to support learning by doing

His story

Roger Koerner was always interested in engineering and was accepted by prestigious universities such as Notre Dame, but he turned them all down for a chance to study mechanical engineering at UNM. To him, the UNM program had everything he needed and something the others didn’t — proximity to the national labs and a chance to get invaluable experience outside of the classroom.

Even today, Koerner is passionate about giving students real-world experience, something he knows quite a bit about.

“I worked at an oil company in high school, and when I got out of school, I knew what I wanted to do,” he said. “I liked solving problems, which is what engineers do.”

photo of Karen and Roger Koerner
Karen and Roger Koerner

Koerner, a Kansas native who grew up in New Mexico, earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1968 and got to travel the world with his long career in the oil industry, most of which was spent at ExxonMobil. He and his family lived in Los Angeles, Louisiana, Texas, Malaysia, plus time spent in Chad, Cameroon, Indonesia, Angola and Russia. He greatly enjoyed his busy and successful career, retiring in 2008, in Montgomery, Texas. He and his wife, Karen, recently moved to Louisiana to be closer to family.

After a busy career, he found himself with time to reflect on what comes next. He quickly found that by looking to the place where he got started — UNM. He began getting involved in the School of Engineering, being selected as a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016. He connected with Chris Hall, then the department head of mechanical engineering, and liked a lot of what he saw going on in the department and the School, particularly the fledgling student projects of the Solar Splash solar-powered boat and the Lobo Launch rocket.

How he is giving back

Koerner said when he was working in industry, he started noticing that a lot of the newly-graduated engineers had book knowledge but lacked other critical skills.

“Students don’t come out of school with an awful lot of experience doing work,” he said. “That’s extremely important in business to have real-world experience with programs, and it’s always been important to me.”

He was impressed with the efforts at UNM to establish a Solar Splash team, heavily supporting the award-winning team that travels yearly to Ohio for competition. For the 2021 team, his donation made possible a new trailer to transport the boat across the country.

He was also impressed by UNM’s efforts to establish a Lobo Launch rocket team. They competed in the Spaceport America Cup competition in southern New Mexico for the first time in 2019, and Koerner was there to observe the team as they competed among teams from around the world.

“Going to Las Cruces to see the rocket, it was a life-changing experience,” he said.

In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Koerner felt the need to make an impact and supported the work of Christina Salas and the massive 3D mask-making efforts in the School of Engineering that benefitted members of the Navajo Nation.

“That project fell in line with my interest of students getting involved in something real, learning leadership and presentation skills.”

Working with a team to solve a problem or a need is the essence of what engineering means to Koerner and why he loves to support the School of Engineering.

“The things these groups are teaching are practical — how to work, how to find answers, how to work in teams and perform. That’s what leadership looks like.”

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