Elizabeth Coogan pictured on the green at TPC Potomac for the Quicken Loans National in 2018. Photo: Courtesy of Elizabeth Coogan.
Her office in Room 107 at the NJAES Office of Continuing Professional Education at Rutgers University seems exactly where Elizabeth Coogan (SEBS’17 Plant Science) belongs. Sure, it’s right next to the copier, which is convenient. But it’s more about where Coogan has spent much of her life in this industry, starting as a student assisting graduate students with field trials and greenhouse studies while working for renowned Distinguished Professor Bingru Huang and graduate program director in the Department of Plant Biology.
Huang, who was inducted into the New Jersey Turfgrass Association Hall of Fame in 2016, provided the inspiration for Coogan to grow and find her niche.
Elizabeth Coogan, program coordinator in Rutgers’ Professional Golf Turf Management Program.
“I did an undergraduate work study assignment for her. I worked in a lab, helping her grad students, taking data samples. I thought, ‘This is fantastic. Amazing.’ It was nice to see a woman (Huang) in management,” Coogan says.
“At the time, she was one of a few female students, if not the only one, majoring in turfgrass science. She was a dedicated worker. Liz is also very smart, one of the top students in her class,” said Huang.
Coogan continues to soar. In April, she started her job as program coordinator in Rutgers’ Professional Golf Turf Management Program. Coogan arrived there after spending five years as an assistant superintendent at Metuchen Golf & Country Club in Edison, N.J., where Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) Class A superintendent, Jason Osterhoudt, saw her grow.
“She was always joyful and made sure things got done,” says Osterhoudt, a 26-year association member. “I’m always trying to push people forward, move on up. What she’s doing is a good fit for her.”
The southern New Jersey product earned a bachelor’s degree in plant science at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences in 2017. She spent time there mowing and recording data for James Murphy, professor in the Department of Plant Biology, and later, worked for turf research farm supervisor Joe Clark. While she was finishing school, Coogan was an assistant-in-training at TPC Jasna Polana in Princeton, N.J.
In 2015 and 2016, she interned at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., and was part of the team for the PGA eight years ago under Mark Kuhns, a Certified Golf Course Superintendent, who looks up to Coogan.
Elizabeth Coogan, then assistant superintendent at Metuchen Golf & Country Club in Edison, N.J., working on the green. Photo: Courtesy of Elizabeth Coogan.
“I teach for her,” says Kuhns, GCSAA president in 2009 and 44-year association member who is an instructor in the golf turf management program and is business development manager at Ceres Turf. “She’s just very smart. When questions were being asked, she had the answers for the other interns. I’m very proud of her.”
Coogan contemplated her future while at Metuchen. “With Jason (at the Metuchen Golf & Country Club) it was nice to be part of an established golf course. At the time, I was thinking I’d go on to be a super,” she says.
Life intervened. “In the last five years, I got married, became a stepmom, bought a house. Sometimes priorities change,” says Coogan, whose husband, Dan, is a field researcher at Rutgers’ Horticulture Research Farm II.
Being at Rutgers, though, isn’t a monumental change for her. Truly, it is so much more. “It’s like coming home,” Coogan says.
What was the oddest thing you saw on the course during your years as an assistant superintendent?
The weirdest thing to see was smoldering trees after being struck by lightning. Happened multiple times on multiple golf courses I’ve worked on. That, and it was always strange to find fish in the middle of the fairways with no water source nearby.
When you got your first job after college, what was your first major purchase?
My own car. For years I was fortunate enough to have use of my brother’s hand-me-down car, but when I bought a vehicle for me that I was solely responsible for, it felt great.
Describe yourself in one word.
Happy.
Reprinted by permission of the GCSAA. View the original article in the GCM online magazine September 2024 issue.
