Joel Brown grew up with a boyhood curiosity about the world around him.

“I was always fascinated with how things worked,” Brown said this week from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quarter-boat on the Mississippi River near Tiptonville, Tenn. “I wanted to understand them and take them apart.”

Brown, 27, has proved to be a fast learner, as the four-year mechanical engineer with the Corps has been named chief of its Mat Sinking Unit and assistant chief of the Revetment Section of the Corps’ Vicksburg District, operations division.

It makes him the youngest unit chief ever selected and one of the youngest to hold the revetment post, Corps spokesman Frank Worley said.

As unit chief, Brown will supervise a crew of more than 300 who will lay revetments along the banks of the Lower Mississippi River from Cairo, Ill., to Venice, La.

The unit places concrete reinforcements, or mattresses, along the river’s 1,000-mile stretch to slow erosion and protect the levee system. Its fleet includes a mat sinking plant, four quarter-boats and three towboats, the MVs Benyaurd, William James and the Harrison. Two additional towboats round out the fleet, one contracted and another, the MV Mississippi V, belongs to the Memphis District. The Mat Sinking Unit begins work in August and wraps up in November.

Brown has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Mississippi State University and began work with the Vicksburg District in August 2004 as a mechanical engineer on the Mat Sinking Unit. Among his duties were handling contracts, securing equipment and designing changes or repairs to equipment on board the unit’s vessels.

Those daily tasks seem routine now, but the DeKalb native didn’t plan for a career on the river when he first looked to use his degree.

“To my surprise, the Corps of Engineers had numerous jobs in the mechanical field.”

Brown, also a member of the Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors as an Engineer Intern, sees his immediate goals as taking care of not just the river, but the people who serve the unit.

“It’s to accomplish a mission and do it safely,” Brown said.