George Rogers, professor and former head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning (LA&UP) at Texas A&M University, has been appointed director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC), announced J. Thomas Regan, dean of the College of Architecture.

Established as part of the College of Architecture in 1988, the HRRC conducts a wide range of research in hazard mitigation, disaster preparedness, response and recovery. The center's interdisciplinary team includes experts in architecture, engineering, geography, geology, psychology, sociology, urban planning and political science.

Rogers, whose research interests include sustainability, risk analysis and planning, technology and society, and quantitative methods, had served as a HRRC faculty fellow since joining the LA&UP in 1991. He served as LA&UP department head from 1998 until fall semester 2003. He stepped down to assume the HRRC director's post vacated by Michael Lindell, also a LA&UP professor.

"During his tenure as head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Rogers significantly advanced departmental initiatives and provided leadership that resulted in a considerable increase in faculty research and scholarly accomplishments," Regan said in making the appointment. "His proven abilities promise to play a vital role in future HRRC initiatives."

Among Roger's accomplishments as head of LA&UP, Regan cited the "recruitment of several outstanding tenured and tenure-track faculty members," including new faculty for the university-wide Sustainable Coastal Margins initiative. Rogers also initiated an undergraduate minor in urban planning, and he supervised several highly successful accrediting agency and university-level reviews of LA&UP undergraduate and graduate programs.

On the university level, with fellow LA&UP Professor Chang-Shan Huang, Rogers coordinated the design competition for the memorial honoring victims of the November 1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse. The competition for the memorial, for which groundbreaking ceremonies were held last summer, garnered extraordinary international participation, Regan noted. Rogers also served several years as a member of the university's Council of Principal Investigators, a group committed to continued improvement of the research environment at Texas A&M.