Dr. Niki Goerger of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Miss., has received the Army’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award for her service with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) (ASAALT) from August 2008 to November 2012. The award was presented during a recent Pentagon ceremony by Mary Miller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology. Dr. Jeffery Holland, ERDC director, attended the ceremony.
The Meritorious Civilian Service Award is the second highest award granted by the Secretary of the Army or a major Army command to civilian personnel. Persons receiving this award are cited for exemplary performance of their duties, demonstrating unusual initiative and skill, achieving outstanding results, or exhibiting unusual courage in an emergency.
“I am very humbled and honored to have received this award, in which so many people played a part,” Goerger said. “Being at ASAALT was a tremendous experience and provided opportunities to serve at a unique level within the Department of Defense structure. I learned a great deal from my colleagues and mentors, to whom I am so grateful. And being able to affect and work on things that help our service members do what they have to do … well, that’s what it’s really about.”
While at ASAALT, Goerger served as the ERDC liaison and held additional positions as the acting director for Basic Research, director for the Deployable Force Protection Program and acting director for the Innovation Enablers Science and Technology Portfolio.
Goerger currently serves as business development director at ERDC, a position she assumed in November of last year.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in biological engineering at Mississippi State University, where she also holds a master’s degree in agricultural engineering with a minor in statistics. Goerger attained her doctorate in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University in 1993, where she was selected as a Westinghouse Manufacturing Fellow in Engineering for 1990.
Goerger is a member of the Military Operations Research Society (MORS), where she was elected to two terms on the executive council, serving as secretary from 2006 to 2007 and as vice president for Professional Affairs from 2007 to 2008. She was elected to the MORS Board of Directors in June 2004, where she served a four-year term. She is also a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and has been inducted as a member of the Order of the Engineer, Phi Kappa Phi, and Tau Beta Phi honor societies.
Goerger is married to retired Army Col. Simon R. Goerger, PhD, an operations research analyst at ERDC. She is a native of Madison, Miss.