I would like to thank the members of COPRI for this opportunity to serve as
President of the Governing Board. Like many of you, I joined ASCE as an
undergraduate student in the hopes of learning more about the profession I was entering. And like some of you, my interest and involvement in
ASCE then fell off in graduate school and early career. But one day this new
institute called COPRI was born - and I knew that I had found a home where I
could focus my interests on the coasts, oceans, ports, and rivers.
My story might be typical and it illustrates a problem that we on the COPRI Board have been wrestling with - how to draw more students and younger members into the many COPRI activities. In fact, we have heard this from many of you on this subject - that COPRI needs better programs aimed at those just entering the profession. And it has been gratifying to see many younger members eagerly jump at the chance to get involved.
This issue of Waterways illustrates some of the strides that we are making.
In one article, Mandy Loeffler, from Moffatt & Nichol, discusses her
experiences as part of the COPRI-led team investigating damage
from Hurricane Ike. Responding to disasters with fact-finding
teams is something we in COPRI have only done twice in the past - for the
2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis and for the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. After
Hurricane Ike devastated the Texas coast, two of our COPRI members, Spencer
Rogers and Billy Edge, initiated the formation of investigation teams for
Hurricane Ike. We tried to populate the investigation teams with a mixture
of seasoned veterans and younger members - with experts from business, government, and academia - and I think we struck a nice balance. You can read about the investigations in Mandy's article and you can find more on our website.
In another article, you are introduced to the newest member of the COPRI Governing Board, Dr. Jennifer Irish, an assistant professor from Texas A&M University. Jennifer is taking on a four-year position as Secretary of the Governing Board, and we are excited to have her input in future Board meetings. Please join me in congratulating Jennifer on her selection to the Board!
A third area in which we have tried to appeal to younger members is in the creation of a COPRI Coastal Solutions Blog. Louise Wallendorf of the U.S. Naval Academy started this in October and has already had some input from John Ramsey discussing an important issue related to dredging and beach nourishment. Louise would welcome additional input as she gets the Blog up and running to provide a mechanism for sharing of opinions on issues related to COPRI. Please pass on news articles and opinions to Louise at lou@usna.edu.
As our past-president, Jim Blanchar, noted in his article in the last issue
of Waterways, the COPRI Board is committed to supporting students. Our first
action was to recognize Juan Recio as the author of the best student paper
at the recent International Coastal Engineering Conference. We hope to make
such recognitions and student involvement a part of every COPRI conference,
and the Board is encouraging all conference organizing committees to budget
for additional student recognition and participation.
To further the goal of advancing the careers of student, we are pleased to
announce that Misra Shubhra, of Halcrow, Inc, has agreed to organize a
career fair sometime next year. The idea, patterned after a highly successful event held by the Construction Institute, would seek to bring together students seeking employment with potential employers. The plan is to hold the first COPRI Career Fair in the Mid-Atlantic area sometime in 2009. The Ports 2010 Conference Organizing Committee is also planning a similar event at their conference in Jacksonville, FL in April 2010. If these prove successful, we envision future events in the Houston and Los Angeles
areas. Several potential employers have already said they would support such an event, and I would ask that any employers willing to help organize the event with Misra please contact him at smisra@halcrow.com.
This is a rundown of some of the new events going on in COPRI to assist the
development of the next generation of coastal, ocean, port, and river
engineers. I encourage you to share your ideas for other activities
with me at kriebel@usna.edu, and urge you to get involved as we
continue to build COPRI.
