Coastal, Ocean and Marine Engineering Graduate Education: A 2012 Health Assessment

Many practitioners (academic, government, industry) of coastal, ocean and marine engineering in the USA have the perception that this once remarkably prolific set of graduate engineering programs are collectively in an overall state of decline. Typical comments revolve around the perceived diminishing number and stature of university and US Government research publications, experimental facilities and field measurement programs. The perception that full scale field measurements are both less robust and more scarce than in decades past seems to be widespread. In the middle of the twentieth century, the largest scale coastal, ocean and marine engineering laboratory facilities were in the United States. The largest scale such facilities are in foreign countries at the present time. Experimental modeling of US Navy ships in the presence of storm waves is performed in a foreign laboratory. With the explosion of high end supercomputer facilities, atmospheric, coastal and ocean modeling made great strides and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) came into its own and took a seat at the table with the most advanced experimental research facilities and field measurement programs during the last four decades. Government laboratories aggressively took advantage of CFD assets with the Army Corps of Engineers, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and Office of Naval Research leading the way. European and Japanese laboratories were making CFD advances simultaneously. A clear CFD leader has not (nor is expected to) emerged, but CFD is in its heyday and competes with the most advanced experimental research, the most innovative field measurements, and the highest end theoretical work for research advances in coastal, ocean and marine engineering. This paper explores the ebb and flow of coastal, ocean and marine engineering research and academic programs demonstrating a decline in the robustness of US research relative to that in other countries. A qualitative case is made for a robust long term US investment in graduate academic research in coastal, ocean and marine engineering accompanied by a renewed national investment in large scale experimental facilities and full scale research programs in the field. Recommendations are made for the way forward to revive this struggling profession which, if implemented, should produce economic dividends for the USA far in excess of the investment and is hypothesized to contribute significantly to national economic security and national defense. We would like for this paper to stimulate a national dialogue leading to a dynamic revival of Coastal, Ocean and Marine Engineering research and graduate education in the United States.