In Memoriam: Roger Mellgren, former chair and professor emeritus in psychology

Wednesday, Apr 09, 2025 • Greg Pederson :

The University of Texas at Arlington lost an exemplary member of the Department of Psychology with the passing of Roger Leonard Mellgren on March 13 in Arlington. He was 80.

Dr. Mellgren was a professor emeritus in psychology and served as chair of the department at UTA from 1988-99. He was a well-published evolutionary comparative psychologist with research interests in animal learning and behavior, evolutionary psychology, foraging theory and feeding behavior, and reptilian behavior. He is remembered fondly by colleagues and former students.

Paul Paulus, a dean emeritus in the College of Science and longtime professor of psychology who followed Dr. Mellgren as department chair, remembers him as a cherished friend and colleague who did his best to help the Department of Psychology grow and flourish.

“Roger was a great friend, a very supportive and encouraging chair, and a beloved mentor and popular teacher,” Paulus said. “He was chair during some very challenging times for our university, and he worked hard under those conditions to gain support for our department.”

Linda Perrotti, professor and current chair of the department, said that when she joined the department in 2006, Dr. Mellgren was already a pillar of the community.

“Faculty and students alike turned to Roger for professional, scientific, and academic guidance, knowing they could rely on his wisdom and generosity,” Perrotti said. “His depth of knowledge and experience in the field of animal learning was truly remarkable. His impact on our department and the lives he touched will not be forgotten.”

Scott Coleman, UTA associate professor of instruction in psychology, was a colleague of Dr. Mellgren’s for years and before that, earned his Ph.D. from UTA in 1999 with Dr. Mellgren as his faculty mentor.

“Roger was an inspirational mentor who permitted his students to explore their personal interests in research; for me it was my interest in avian learning and behavior,” Coleman said. “Seeing my passion for the topic, he provided the space and resources for an aviary in the Life Sciences Building. His guidance had a collaborative feel to it which allowed for an individualized experience and development as a scientist.

“After my graduation we continued to work together. Ultimately, he suggested that I teach his advanced course in animal behavior after his retirement from UTA. We remained friends and shared many experiences until his passing. All-in-all he made my life much better and provided the opportunity to succeed in my dream of becoming an animal behaviorist.”

Dr. Mellgren was born August 24, 1944, in Bremerton, Washington, to the late Leonard Palmer Mellgren and Vaudine Ione Mellgren. While growing up his family lived in Bremerton, Minneapolis, and Summit, N.J. He enjoyed playing hockey and loved cars and being around them — this included serving as a flag man for local car races. Over the years he bought multiple cars with the money he saved up from working as a grocery store sacker.

After graduating from Summit High School, New Jersey, in 1962, he enrolled at the University of Kansas. He set out with the intention of becoming a city planner, but when he learned that the instructor of a psychology class he was taking found the film Dr. Strangelove just as funny as he did, he began to think about focusing on psychology.

He went on to earn a B.A. in Psychology in 1966 and enrolled in graduate school at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. He earned his Ph.D. in Learning and Developmental Science in 1970 and that same year accepted a job as a member of the psychology faculty at the University of Oklahoma.

In 1968, while still working on his doctoral degree, Dr. Mellgren married Karen Crenshaw-Estes. They had three children before divorcing.

In addition to his teaching and research, he served as president of the Southwestern Psychology Association, and as secretary-treasurer and convention manager of the Psychonomic Society. In 1976-77 he was an invited scholar at Cambridge University, England.

In 1988, Dr. Mellgren accepted an offer to come to The University of Texas at Arlington as a tenured professor and chair of the Department of Psychology. The following year, he married Martha Mann, a fellow psychology professor whom he met at UTA. Mann was part of the search committee which recommended his hiring.

At UTA he helped lead the development of an interdisciplinary animal behavior graduate program with the Department of Biology, which predated the biology Ph.D. program. The program allowed psychology and biology students to earn doctoral degrees by combining coursework and research interests shared by each discipline.

His research was published in journals including International Journal of Comparative Psychology and Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience. One research project Dr. Mellgren led at UTA included studying the personalities of dogs and humans and how to better match people with prospective pets from animal shelters. In another, he and Coleman studied social foraging behavior in zebra finches.

For many years he, Mann and their students studied the behavior of baby sea turtles in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to evaluate the turtles’ choices of habitats and their reactions to the threat of predators. They published numerous articles on this research.

Dr. Mellgren retired from UTA and was named professor emeritus in 2015.

He is remembered for his joyful demeanor and his love of humor and good jokes. He loved watching hockey, coaching soccer, cooking, traveling, and working on his summer house at Prince Edward Island, Canada. He also enjoyed grabbing a pint with friends at a neighborhood pub. He was a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys and the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team. He loved taking long walks and relished being outdoors.

He also loved to play golf, and Paulus recalls many golf outings with Dr. Mellgren and Jim Erickson, who preceded Dr. Mellgren as department chair. The trio also enjoyed going as spectators every year to the Colonial National Invitation Tournament (now the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial) in Fort Worth, where they would take photos and try to collect autographs from the professional golfers.

Survivors include his wife of 36 years, Martha Mann; daughter Jill Richardson and her husband Jeff Richardson, of Norman, OK; son Scott Mellgren; daughter Sarah Noonan and her husband, Connor Noonan; grandchildren Jack Richardson, Dylan Mellgren, Joshua Upton, Hadley Noonan, and Penelope Noonan.

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