Rate My Professor Wes Lauer

J. Wesley Lauer, PhD, PE, serves as Chair and Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Seattle University, a position he has held since joining the faculty in 2006 following his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He previously earned an M.Eng. in Civil Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998 and a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering from Walla Walla University in 1996. From 1998 to 2002, and intermittently thereafter, Dr. Lauer worked as a civil engineer and hydrologist at Questa Engineering Corporation in Richmond, California. He maintains an affiliated faculty appointment in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Washington since 2009 and directed Seattle University's Environmental Science Program from 2014 to 2020. Additionally, he served as Associate Geomorphologist at Herrera Environmental Consultants from 2012 to 2013. A registered Professional Engineer in Washington State, Dr. Lauer has engaged in research and consulting projects spanning flood management, geomorphic assessments of rivers, and numerical modeling of hydraulic, hydrologic, and geomorphic processes across states including Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Louisiana, as well as in Europe, Haiti, Jamaica, and Papua New Guinea.

Dr. Lauer specializes as a geomorphologist and engineer with extensive experience in water resources engineering, geomorphology, sediment transport, numerical modeling, and geographic information systems. His research focuses on the hydraulic, geomorphic, and sediment transport implications of long-term environmental changes in river systems, including decadal-scale measurements of channel width changes in the Minnesota River basin and development of the Morphodynamics and Sediment Tracers in 1-Dimension (MAST-1D) model, which simulates size-specific sediment transport and exchange with floodplain deposits. He authored and updates the River Planform Statistics Toolbox, an ArcGIS add-in for stream restoration. Key publications include 'A new framework for modeling the migration of meandering rivers' (2011, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms), 'Large shift in source of fine sediment in the Upper Mississippi River' (2011, Environmental Science & Technology), 'Twentieth century agricultural drainage creates more erosive rivers' (2014, Hydrological Processes), 'Net local removal of floodplain sediment by river meander migration' (2008, Geomorphology), and 'Modeling framework for sediment deposition, storage, and evacuation in the floodplain of a meandering river' (2008, Water Resources Research). Honors include the Seattle University Bannan Chair of Engineering (2015-2017), Global Engagement Grants (2016, 2018), Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability Faculty Fellowship (2014-2015), and the Anderson Award from the University of Minnesota (2005).