From New Hampshire to the Mississippi Delta, Water Professionals Graduate from Tulane’s River-Coastal Program

Across the United States, engineers and scientists are working every day to understand and manage the rivers that shape communities, economies, and ecosystems.

A harbor dredging expert in New Hampshire. An infrastructure engineer in Arkansas. A hydrologist studying the Mississippi River in New Orleans. A river stabilization leader designing bank protection along one of the largest river systems in the world.

Each of them works in a different place, tackling different water challenges. Yet they all share one classroom at Tulane University.  

This year’s graduating cohort includes Ben Emery (New Hampshire), Gabe Knight (Arkansas), Canda Lorson (New Orleans), and Zach Lynch (Mississippi), part of the first graduating class of Tulane’s River-Coastal Science and Engineering Distance Learning master’s program, a hybrid degree designed for professionals already working in water engineering, river science, and coastal management across the United States.

The program was built with working professionals in mind. Lectures are delivered through recorded modules, followed by live weekly sessions where students and faculty work through exercises, discuss research, and apply concepts to real-world challenges. It is just one of six degree programs within the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering.

Barbara Kleiss, who leads the program at Tulane, said the hybrid structure allows professionals to continue advancing their careers while deepening their technical expertise.

“Our students are already working on some of the most complex river and coastal systems in the country,” Kleiss said. “The goal of the program is to give them deeper scientific understanding while allowing them to continue doing the work.”

Tulane’s River-Coastal Science and Engineering program has grown rapidly since its founding in 2017, with a clear focus on connecting academic training to real-world water systems.

The department was established to bring together river science, coastal processes, and engineering into a single interdisciplinary program. In 2018, Tulane formed a cooperative partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop joint educational initiatives, launching a graduate certificate in River Science and Engineering along with the School of Science and Engineering’s first hybrid, non-resident courses.

That certificate program laid the groundwork for a broader academic pathway. In 2023, Tulane’s River-Coastal Science and Engineering graduate programs, including the master’s degree, received official accreditation, allowing students, including those participating in other states, to transition into fully recognized degree programs.

“Tulane saw a need in creating RCSE for a department that merged theoretical science with practical engineering at the water nexus,” said Mead Allison, founding chair of the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering. “Water issues are becoming ever more prominent in the 21st century, and the interconnected nature of water gathered in river drainage basins, passing through deltas, and into the coastal ocean is the most critical. These settings serve vast socio-economic needs in agriculture, fisheries, energy production and transportation and span critical and threatened ecosystems across the globe. As we send our graduates out to careers in government, NGO, industry, and academia, we believe they will become leaders in guiding wise stewardship of the river-coastal continuum.”

“During the spring semester in 2018, we held our first course, Introduction to River Science and Engineering with 20 students, half Corps of Engineers students, and half on-campus Tulane graduate students,” said Barbara A. Kleiss, Ph.D., research professor and coordinator of RCSE non-residential programs in the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering. “Now after 17 semesters, we have taught river and coastal courses to 129 individual government students and 79 on-campus Tulane students. Together, these students can positively affect water resource management nationwide.”

That collaboration between Tulane and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers remains central to the program’s success.

“Launched in 2018, our program sought to bridge the gap between river engineering theory and practice, a feat rarely accomplished in traditional academia,” said David S. Biedenharn, adjunct professor in the Department of River-Coastal Science and Engineering and research hydraulic engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “By fully integrating the Tulane and Corps of Engineers staff, we have turned this challenge into a success. Our program’s continued growth is a testament to the effectiveness of this unified approach.”

“Graduating our first distance learning master’s cohort is a proud milestone for Tulane and a strong validation of our vision for the River-Coastal Science and Engineering Department,” said Ehab Meselhe, PhD, PE, Charlotte Beyer Hubbell Chair and department chair of the River-Coastal Science and Engineering program in the School of Science and Engineering. “These graduates are already making important contributions across the country while advancing their expertise through Tulane. We are excited for the continued growth of this program and the future impact of our department in preparing leaders in water resources.”

Today, the program reflects that original vision, connecting professionals across the United States who are working on some of the most complex river, navigation, and coastal challenges in the country.

For Ben Emery, a research civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Coastal Hydraulics Laboratory, based at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in New Hampshire, the program offered an opportunity to expand the science behind his day-to-day work.

Emery serves as a dredging subject matter expert and previously managed dredging programs along the Mississippi River from St. Paul to the Gulf. After years working in operations, he wanted to better understand the larger systems influencing river management.

“It helped close knowledge gaps and gave me the scientific foundation behind the work we do,” Emery said.

Balancing graduate coursework with a full-time career and family responsibilities would have been difficult without the flexibility of the hybrid format.

“I have two young kids, I travel for work, and I coach,” Emery said. “Having the flexibility to watch recordings when I had no choice but to miss a class and to participate remotely made it possible.”

The program’s reach extends across the Mississippi River basin. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Gabe Knight works as an engineering supervisor overseeing maintenance engineering along the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, a 300-mile waterway connecting the Arkansas River to the Mississippi River and supporting commercial navigation.

Knight originally enrolled in a distance learning civil engineering program elsewhere but found the curriculum focused heavily on water scarcity challenges common in the western United States. Tulane’s program offered something much closer to his daily work.

“The courses were right up my alley for what I was doing day to day,” Knight said.

Through coursework in river mechanics, hydraulics, and sediment systems, he gained tools that influence how he evaluates river behavior and infrastructure decisions.

“They taught me how to read a river,” Knight said.

In New Orleans, hydrologist Canda Lorson brought a different perspective shaped by years of field work measuring rivers and water quality across the country. After transitioning from field work into a more data focused role within the Corps’ water management section, she saw the program as a chance to reconnect with the science behind the Mississippi River system.

“We’re in our own different world down here,” Lorson said.

Having previously measured river flows in Pennsylvania, she was struck by the scale of the Mississippi River.

“The most water I ever measured in the Susquehanna was a couple hundred thousand cubic feet per second during flood events,” she said. “Down here it’s over 1.4 million during flood events.”

Through courses on coastal geology, river systems, and sediment transport, she gained a deeper understanding of how the Mississippi River interacts with Louisiana’s delta and coastal environment. The program also introduced new technical skills including coding and data analysis tools that she now uses in her work.

Further north along the river system, Zach Lynch leads the River Stabilization Section in the Corps’ Vicksburg District, designing bank stabilization projects and revetments along the Mississippi River and several of its tributaries.

Lynch began the program during the COVID pandemic to strengthen his technical foundation and prepare for professional engineering certification exams.

“It was all job applicable, which is exactly what I was looking for,” Lynch said.

Courses in river mechanics and open channel hydraulics strengthened his understanding of the processes driving the bank stabilization and erosion control work his team performs every day.

Now as a section chief, Lynch encourages engineers in his office to take many of the same courses.

“These classes cover the fundamentals of what we do every day,” Lynch said. “Understanding those basics helps everyone do their jobs better.”

Across the cohort, students said the program’s faculty, which includes six faculty members from the Tulane campus in New Orleans and six adjunct professors from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey, brought a rare combination of academic expertise and real-world experience to the classroom.

“They’ve actually done the work,” Lorson said.

For professionals considering advanced training while continuing their careers, the graduates say the program offers a rare balance of flexibility and real-world relevance. Many students begin by taking a single course before deciding to tackle the graduate certificate or complete the full degree.

For the graduating students, the milestone represents both a personal achievement and a shared professional investment in the future of river and coastal systems. Because they are working full time, most of the students can only take one course per semester, so completing the master’s degree is a testament to their perseverance and dedication to the field.

As Emery put it, the experience offered something deeper than just another credential.

“You’re not just doing the work,” he said. “You understand the science behind it.”

As more professionals join the program in the coming years, Tulane’s River-Coastal Science and Engineering master’s program is helping build a national network of engineers and scientists working to understand and manage the waterways that shape communities across the United States.