ST. PAUL, Minn. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, will host a change of command ceremony in St. Paul, Minn., June 19.
Col. Daniel C. Koprowski will assume command of the St. Paul District from Col. Michael J. Price. Koprowski will become the district’s 64th commander and district engineer. Price will move on to his next Army assignment, serving as the commander of the Corps’ Afghanistan District.
Prior to assuming this command, Koprowski was assigned to the National War College in Washington, D.C. A native New Yorker, he earned his commission in the Corps of Engineers from Boston University Army ROTC. His previous assignments include assistant brigade engineer and company executive officer with the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y.; brigade engineer with the 1st Infantry Division in Vilseck, Germany; Company A commander with the 82nd Engineer Battalion in Bamberg, Germany; instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point; assistant division engineer and then division engineer, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky.; operations and then executive officer of the Special Troops Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team; professor of military science at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; rear detachment commander, 130th Engineer Brigade, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; and 65th Engineer Battalion (Combat Effects), Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. He served tours in Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia.
The St. Paul District traces its origins to 1866, when Congress authorized the Corps of Engineers to establish a 4-foot navigation channel on the notoriously unreliable Upper Mississippi River. Maj. Gouverneur Kemble Warren, a West Point graduate widely acclaimed for his leadership at Battle of Gettysburg, was tasked with initiating the new program and conducting preliminary surveys of the main river and its tributaries. Warren arrived in St. Paul, Minn., and opened the first district office in August 1866.
The nearly 700 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, employees working at more than 40 sites in five upper-Midwest states serve the American public in the areas of environmental enhancement, navigation, flood damage reduction, water and wetlands regulation, recreation sites and disaster response. Through the Corps’ Fiscal Year 2011 $175 million budget, nearly 2,800 non-Corps jobs were added to the regional economy as well as $271 million to the national economy. For more information, see www.mvp.usace.army.mil.
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NOTE TO EDITORS: Please call 651-290-5807, if you have reporters interested in attending the ceremony, which will take place at 10 a.m., June 19, at the district’s headquarters building.