Scott C. Hagen, professor and Louisiana Sea Grant Laborde Chair at the University of Iowa, has died. The ASCE fellow was 60.
His truest legacy was encouraging academic success among his numerous students – doctoral candidates and others – and he traveled the world doing just that.
Along with his duties at UI’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hagen, Ph.D., P.E., D.CE, D.WRE, F.ASCE, spent an abundance of his time and effort with IIHR, the internationally renowned hydroscience and engineering laboratory, where researchers are now solving some of our world’s greatest fluids-related challenges. He served as a member of its advisory board from 2014 to 2018.
Hagen was a global leader among scientists studying rising sea levels and their impacts. The many honors during his career included a Diplomate of Coastal Engineering and a Diplomate of Water Resources Engineering. He also served on the board of ASCE’s Coasts, Oceans, Ports & Rivers Institute.
He was treasurer of the COPRI Governing Board, 2009-2014, and founding chair of the Institute’s Coastal Engineering Sciences Committee from 2008 to 2012. He was also past chair of COPRI’s Coastal Engineering Sciences Committee and faculty advisor (founding) for the COPRI Louisiana State University Student Chapter until recently.
He spent a year at Iowa State University, then returned home to farm for 10 years before enrolling at UI to study engineering. He then entered the University of Notre Dame as a doctoral student. After earning his Ph.D., he joined the faculty at the University of Central Florida, where he served as a professor of civil, environmental, and construction engineering. Hagen built a flourishing program in tidal studies and computational modeling at UCF, where he also led the university’s major research focus on the coastal dynamics of sea- level rise.
Hagen served as director of UCF’s Coastal Hydroscience Analysis, Modeling, and Predictive Simulations Laboratory (CHAMPS), focusing on coastal hydroscience challenges like the development of an advanced astronomic tidal model to study rising sea levels.
In 2015, he accepted an LSU faculty position and was named the John P. Laborde Endowed Chair for Sea Grant Research and Technology Transfer and the director of the LSU Center for Coastal Resiliency. With his team at LSU, Hagen developed numerous forecast tide and storm surge models. His recent research explored transport and biogeophysical modeling.
When he achieved tenure at UCF, he was soon awarded an endowed chair at Louisiana State University, where he contributed to so many an academic success story. Hagen believed in focusing on personal and professional life – on the betterment of relationships, his research, and the environment.
