Dr. Hagerott currently serves as Vice President of the Northern Tier chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association and on the North Dakota UAS Council. He recently retired as the Chancellor of the North Dakota University System, an eleven campus system with two research universities, after a record ten years in office. He speaks frequently on the implications of artificial intelligence on education, training, and work force. He served on Governor Burgum’s AI Taskforce of 2024 and was the keynote speaker to the Minnesota State Regent’s and President’s Retreat of 2025 on the topic of providing a framework for the AI, and a national meeting of leaders of university systems across the country in Summer 2024. He recently co-developed and taught a new course at NDSU on the evolution of technology and emergence of AI. He is now working on two research/writing projects for the US Naval Institute on the topic of work force transformation in response to emerging technology for the US military.

Prior to his academic career, Hagerott held multiple technical leadership positions.  A certified naval nuclear engineer, he served as reactor controls officer on two reactors, and chief engineer for a major environmental project de-fueling of two atomic reactors. Hagerott also managed tactical data networks, the semi-autonomous AEGIS system, and was the Deputy Director of the US Naval Academy Cyber Center. In addition to his undergraduate degree from Annapolis, he holds a masters degree from Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a doctorate in history of technology from the University of Maryland College Park.

He served as a White House Fellow, on the Defense Science Board summer study of autonomy and robotic systems, and as a non-resident Cyber Fellow of the New America Foundation. He was among the first professors from the United States to address the Geneva Convention CCW in 2014 on the challenge of lethal robotic machines and advocate for early arms control measures.  His research and writing focus on the evolution of technology and education. His proposals for national education reform in response to digitization and artificial intelligence have been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in Issues in Science and Technology, the Dakota Digital Review, and the Northern Plains Ethics Journal, and have been presented on Capitol Hill and the White House. His family has farmed in Morton County North Dakota since before statehood and in the early days of the internet, he helped code and develop two web-based non-profits to support farmers and veterans.