Fred Rogers

For a total of 35 years Fred Rogers served as Chief Financial Officer at three different institutions – Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University and Carleton College – before retiring in 2020. Rogers is regarded as a highly effective CFO who led with a mission focus, worked cooperatively, communicated extensively with all stakeholders, and served as a teacher and mentor to others.  He has led processes for campus master planning, major budget realignments, significant capital investments in new and refurbished buildings and was a key leader in the development of several strategic plans and capital campaign budgets and goal setting.  He is a major advocate for sustainability and led campus-wide transformative projects for carbon reduction and energy efficiency at both Cornell and Carleton.  While on leave for nine months from Carnegie Mellon, he served as the Executive Assistant to the Secretary of Labor and Industry of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  In his career, Rogers also worked as an entrepreneur in the private sector serving Higher Education and owned his own company. He has served on multiple higher education institutional accreditation review teams in two regions. In 2013, Fred was selected as a National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) Distinguished Business Officer, the highest award of NACUBO.

Rogers has an interest in international affairs having graduated from the American Community School of Beirut.  Rogers returned to the United States to enroll at Carleton and then returned to Lebanon to spend his junior year of college at the American University of Beirut.  Rogers graduated from Carleton with a BA in mathematics and went on to complete an MS with distinction from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Urban and Public Affairs, now the Heinz School of Public Policy.  He began his professional career at Carnegie Mellon in Institutional Research.  Both Carnegie Mellon and Carleton have awarded Rogers an alumni achievement award in recognition of his professional contributions. 

Rogers has been a teacher and presenter at many professional meetings and organizations including: NACUBO, the Association of Governing Boards (AGB) and the Eastern Association of College and University Business Officers (EACUBO. Rogers taught for five years in the Southern Association of College and University Business Officers (SACUBO) / University of Kentucky College Business Management Institute program (CBMI) and in the NACUBO Executive Leadership Symposium before he helped to initiate the EACUBO/Cornell University Administrative Management Institute (AMI). Fred continued to direct and lead AMI each summer for 21 years through 2014. He then taught for several years in the NACUBO New Business Officer program that preceded the NACUBO national meeting.

Over a period of twenty-eight years Rogers served multiple terms as a trustee of the Lebanese American University in Beirut, where he chaired the Audit, Investment and Financial Planning committees and also served as Secretary and Vice Chair of the Board. He served for 6 years as a board member of Anera, a long-standing organization that provides medical supplies, training, education and infrastructure investments for Palestinians.  He is a founding board member of LEO, an organization supporting Palestinian college and university students.

Fred served for several years as the chair of the NACUBO Sustainability Advisory Committee and is a past board member of the Private College 529 Plan, now known as College Well. In Northfield he has served as a board member and President of the Northfield Economic Development Authority and is currently a board member and the past chair of the board of the Northfield Hospital & Clinics and a trustee of the First United Church of Christ in Northfield.  He is a member of the Northfield Rotary Club.  In February 2024 the City of Northfield awarded Fred the Board & Commission Member Excellence Award for his service as the Northfield Hospital board vice chair and then chair during the COVID pandemic.

Rogers and his wife and Carleton classmate, Jenny Hartley, have three grown children and two grand-children. They are known among Carleton students as generous hosts for international students who have no US home.