COPRI is pleased to announce that several members have recently stepped up to chair Institute Committees. The Institute offers best wishes to retiring chairs such as Past President Charlie Calhoun who has rotated off of the Policy Committee to focus on the ASCE Infrastructure Committee, and to past chairs moving on to new job endeavors.
Calhoun will be replaced by James Marino, who previously led the Military Programs Committee. He has more than 30 years of professional experience, including 20 years as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has served in an executive management role for a broad range of engineering projects, providing comprehensive staff and project management, development, and oversight. His experience includes engineering management for, public works, port, coastal, transportation, environmental, and housing development projects. His experience also includes
living and working in Europe and Asia. He has been Director of Public Works for US Army Japan where he was responsible for a mutitude of disciplines including the master planning , engineering and operation of 3 deep-water ports. He was the Chief Executive Officer while stationed in Germany of a bridge construction company building bridges and ferries over the Danube, Rhine, and Main Rivers. In Addition, he managed a multi-million dollar Research & Development Program while stationed at the US Army Research & Development Center Coastal Engineering Research Center (ERDC CHL) for 4 years. Currently, he serves as the lead for Halcrow’s Practice of Sustainable Coasts and Waterfronts in North America. A winner of the USACE deFleury Medal, Marino serves as a Vice Chair on ASCE’s Leadership & Management Committee as well as numerous COPRI committees.
This year, Marino will work with the Policy Committee to conduct a complete inventory of all current COPRI-related Policy Statements of ASCE, recommend which need to be reviewed and updated, identify where we have policy gaps and recommend new policy needs as appropriate. The Policy Committee will work with each of the technical committees to prepare new policy for sustainable infrastructure needs throughout our respective areas of responsibility.
On the Wetlands and Sediment Management Committee, Dominic Izzo has recruited Robert Essenwein to help lead the committee. Izzo recently accepted a new position with KBR, Inc. that brings extensive travel.
Esenwein, a Certifed Environmental Professional, began his 26th year with AECOM in 2008. During that time, he started and led the environmental planning practice for one AECOM company for over 20 years. The beneficial use of dredged material for the Houston-Galveston Navigation project is one of Esenwein’s projects that stands out as a major contribution to the civil engineering and planning profession’s efforts to combine ecological and dredging engineering principles cost effectively in a large multi-year project of constructing wetland systems from dredged material. Esenwein currently works as a full time contractor at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District, working in project management and preparing feasibility studies for major flood damage reduction projects to be located in southeast Louisiana. Esenwein's project work has been honored with two awards from engineering organizations and a major award from a national environmental professional association. Among his publications, is a chapter contribution in the ASCE Manual entitled Quality in the Constructed Project.
The Governing Board recently selected Scott Hagen to lead the Tidal Hydraulics Committee. Hagen received his Ph.D. in 1998 from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied under Joannes J. Westerink. Dr. Hagen is presently an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Central Florida and is a registered Professional Engineer with the State of Florida. At UCF he has established an internationally recognized lab for coastal hydroscience analysis, modeling and predictive simulations (Please see http://champs.cecs.ucf.edu/) with particular focus on astronomic and meteorologic tidal modeling, including hurricane storm surge simulations and tidal flow analyses.
Hagen has invited all interested COPRI members to consider joining the committee. To learn more about new committee projects or to get involved, contact him at shagen@mail.ucf.edu.
