Dr John Rogers

Earlier this week we were shocked and saddened to hear that Dr John Rogers had passed away unexpectedly over the weekend.

John, as a previous Deputy Chair, will be well known to members of ARMA as well as the wider international research management community.

“We are so incredibly sad to hear of John’s passing. He has been a key member of the ARMA community for many years, including having served as Deputy Chair on our Board. He was always welcoming, known for being a supportive colleague, and for his great sense of humour. He will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his loved ones, friends and colleagues at this time,” Lorna Wilson, Chair of ARMA.

Hamish Macandrew, previous COO of ARMA, reflected on many years of working with John.

“John Rogers was very much a champion of ARMA. Indeed, he embodied ARMA in many ways, always offering a friendly welcome to new members at Conference, always happy to offer, but never impose his thoughts at a training course, delighting in providing encouragement to other Board and Committee members but rarely seeking the limelight.

He understood what ARMA could offer and what set it apart from other membership organisations. This understanding was crucial when, as Deputy Chair, nearly 10 years ago, John worked alongside then-Chair Steph Bales and the Board of the time to recover an ailing organisation and transform it into the ARMA it is today. John took on operational responsibility for a time, temporarily collocating the ARMA office in with his own Research management team at Stirling before it moved to Edinburgh. John appointed an interim COO and a core staff. Working to Steph’s clear strategic lead, John put in place the essential, supportive building blocks of transparency, effective governance and financial accountability that are the foundations of your ARMA today. He led the redrafting of the Association’s Articles and created the Board and Committee structure. Together, Steph and John created over 80 opportunities for member involvement in the forward direction of the Association.

While John always self-deprecatingly joked that he was the last person you would appoint to be Deputy Chair, feigning that he never looked at the detail or understood some of the financial complexities, those who worked closely with him knew that this was very definitely not the case. John had a forensic eye for the detail and an ability to pose, in the nicest and most articulate way, ‘the killer question’!

Those of us who worked with John learned a lot from him- his ability to handle, and communicate, difficult issues; his skill chairing committees where he ensured that everyone had their say before gently corralling them together into a way forward; his can-do, pragmatic, solutions-based approach; and his insistence on a transparent and ethical approach.

John was very well connected and I’ll leave it for others to describe the catalytic role he played at Stirling University, helping to raise its profile by facilitating new companies and putting in place innovative partnership initiatives that put the University at the heart of the Stirling and Clackmannanshire community, generating new job opportunities and improving services for all.

But most of us knew John the person as well as the professional. He had a life. Some of us would find ourselves chatting to John in an empty conference breakfast room at 6am, discussing all measure of topics including early harvests on John’s allotment, Scottish politics, recent walks on the mountains with his beloved dog, and, of course, John’s children, of whom he was rightly very proud, always keen to share what they’d achieved but never in a boastful way.

John was a people person. Regardless of your role or status, regardless of the circumstances, John always had a kindly word and a reassuring smile. Things would work out fine. And they always did.”

Pauline Muya, Steph Bales and Ian Carter, who worked closely with John over the years, highlighted his wide-ranging contribution to the sector.

“John Rogers has been one of the leading figures in research management over the past 25 years. He played a significant role in the development of our profession through positions on the ARMA Board but also more broadly starting with his responsibility for RAE2001. He undertook a significant review of ARMA’s governance and financial arrangements a few years ago and undoubtedly the Association is in a much stronger position as a result of his contributions.

He was deeply committed to supporting colleagues in their personal and professional development and gave unselfishly of his time to assist others. He was an excellent mentor, taking a particular interest in seeing more women develop and grow into leadership positions. Back in 2010, it was more unusual to see women in Director-level positions in research management, but John worked with and supported a number of us to achieve those roles and to succeed in them.  He was robust and able to offer just the right level of challenge, but was also thoughtful and hugely supportive, dropping everything when crises presented themselves, asking the right questions and offering his own razor-sharp perspectives that invariably showed a way out of whatever impasse we found ourselves in.

John was always the life and soul of any ARMA conference and could often be found at the centre of social activities. His professionalism was second to none and his loyalty, integrity, commitment to others and to our field was exemplary. He will be sadly missed by many of us. “

John will be a great loss to the entire research management community and our thoughts are with his loved ones and friends at this time.

Alasdair
CEO, ARMA