NEWS FOR AND ABOUT EPA EMPLOYEES
INSIDE:
* Info Open House
* Day Care Underway
VOLUME 4
NUMBER 4
April 1987
OOON87001
Career Development in the Sciences
How can we make EPA a place that
attracts talented technical and
scientific people and helps them stay
productive and feel good about their
careers?
In September 1985, senior scientists
and managers representing the
Regional Offices, Laboratories and the
major program offices at Headquarters
were brought together by
Administrator Lee Thomas, and
charged with improving the work
environment of scientific and
technical staff so they can efficiently
support the evolving mission of the
Agency.
The group was told to find ways to
keep the Agency on the cutting edge
of emerging scientific and technical
knowledge, assist in the design of a
separate non-managerial career ladder
at the higher grade levels, study the
need for changes in policies and
programs that may work against career
growth in scientific fields, advise the
Administrator, the Deputy
Administrator, and the Office of
Human Resources Management on
scientific and technical resource
allocation, recommend ways the
existing workforce can be "retooled"
as Agency resource needs shift, and
develop useful rotational assignment
programs. Some of the group's
accomplishments to date include:
• developing, with the Office of
Human Resources Management, a
policy statement, signed by Lee
Thomas October 14, 1986, on
participation in professional societies
and associations whose missions are
compatible with the Agency's,
particularly where membership can
promote professional competence and
growth.
• reviewing dual career paths being
used by other government and
non-government agencies and helping
direct the development of that
concept at EPA, recognizing that the
Agency must not force scientific and
technical personnel into management
positions in order to gain promotion.
• providing oversight and support for
the development of OHRM's job
analysis study covering physical
scientists and chemists. When similar
data are developed for all EPA job
series, they will form the foundation of
the Career Management System.
• recommending allocation of
$30,000 from the OHRM professional
training budget to the development of
scientific and technical training for
the EPA professional community,
including an EPA-based training
institute staffed principally by Agency
experts who would serve as
"professors" in a classroom setting,
with criteria for judging the quality of
course content and presentation, and
a peer process for curriculum review.
• delineating a proposal for senior
professional sabbaticals, a vital means
to encourage continued intellectual
development.
• initiating a major effort to examine
ways to license and certify EPA
professionals in work-related disciplines.
• gaining Thomas's approval for
establishment of self-nominated
subcommittees to develop options for
issues confronting Agency professionals.
Some of the other areas the group is
addressing include an award system
for EPA professionals to be
administered by prestigious scientific
and technical societies, acting on a
preliminary list of disincentives to
professional accomplishment, and
continuing to work with the Office of
Administration in its efforts to recruit
scientific and technical staff.
(Continued on back.J
Puvak
Named
One of
Top 40
(See Story on Page 2).
Ken Puvak
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People
Deaths: Jerry Stara, Director of Environment Criteria
and Assessment Office in Cincinnati, Ohio, February 26.
Special Act Awards presented to: Barry Goldfarb,
Research and Development. . . June Lobit and Robert
Hardaker, Water . . James Lewis, Margherita Pryor, Eloise
Davis, John Heritage, Miles Allen, James Ballantine,
Susan Tejada, External Affairs. . . Craig Wolff, Policy,
Planning, and Evaluation. . . John Adams, Brent Bohn,
Avis Robinson, and David Osterman, Administration and
Resources Management . . Toni Smith, John Rasnic, and
Glennette Holsey, Air and Radiation. . . Charles Auer and
Elaine Francis, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. . .
Special Act Awards presented to: Park Haney, Robert
Schneider, Edmund Struzeski, Sally Arnold, Karen
DeWald, John Ellison, Eugene Lubieniecki, Joel Mattern,
Michael Mutnan, Alan Peckham, Steven Sisk, Donald
Patton, Cheryl Stevenson, Barbara Hughes, Joe Lowry,
Richard Ross, and William Hare National Enforcement
Investigations Center, Denver. . . Sylvia Hall, Deborah
McSwain, James Davis, Kara Kitagawa, and Zachary
Fraser, Air and Radiation . . Martine Carillo, Stanley
Fredericks, Robert Allwein, Gerald Johnson, Carl
Dolinka, Sandra Martin, Lisa Fiely, Wanda Kyler, Susan
Pai, James Mich, Nellie Tippenhauer, Eugene Pontillo,
Susan Hahn, Joseph Safa, Martine Carrillo, Stanley
Fredericks, Robert Allwein, Gerald Johnson, Carl
Dolinka, Jackie Shipley, Alvin Pesachowitz, and John
Edwardson, Administration and Resources Management. . .
Robert Wolcott, Thomas Super, Mary Allen, and Albert
Shillino, Policy, Planning, and Evaluation . . Kenneth
Wright, External Affairs. . . Teresa Malone, Virginia
Pruden, and Towanna Dorsey, Water. . . Kathryn
Hodgkiss, Office of the Administrator. . . Michael Binder,
Office of the Inspector General.
Sustained Superior Performance Awards presented to:
Mahesh Podar, Julie Kiser, Christopher Prins, Janet
Geuder, and Richard Kashmanian, Policy, Planning, and
Evaluation. . . Dorothy Birt, Kimberly Whetstone, Kais
Kitagawa, Jerome Franklin, Stuart Romanow, Richard
Babst, Louis Johnson, Claude Magnuson, Mark David,
Aaron Martin, Savitri Simms, Charles Case, Laura
Phillip, Zachary Fraser, Laurie Weinstein, Veronica
Reilly, Belinda Holmes, and Anthony Tesoriero, Air and
Radiation. . . Elizabeth Jackson, Mary Fehrenbacher, and
William Pepelko, Administration and Resources
Management. . . Debra Taylor, Karen Farmer, Mary
Radzikowski, Nathan Ives, Cathleen Mclnerney, Ruth
Douglas, Lori Tripoli, Herbert Lacayo, Linda Vlier, Mark
Petts, Martha Delaney, John Whalen, Janet Burrell,
Patricia Critchlow, and Yuen-Shang Ng, Pesticides and
Toxic Substances. . . Romona Haebler, Chao Chen, Steven
Bayard, Vincent Cogliano, Harold Zenick, Jean Parker,
Beatrice Drakeford, David Jacobson-Kram, Eric Chegg,
and Brenda Gloster, Research and Development. . . Mary
Harpending, Linda Hock, Clif Miller, Jack Mohl, Ella
Pike, William Allan, Douglass Kendall, Glena Mackey,
Randolph Morris, Eric Nottingham, Clayton Clark, Alice
Donahue, Jeanne Jongleux, William Smith, John West, and
Martin Wright, National Enforcement Investigations
Center, Denver. . . Carole Johnson, Thomas Armitage,
Therese Dougherty, and Glenda Farmer, Pesticides and
Toxic Substances . . Antoinette Wren, Robert Greco,
Sylvia Hall, and Sean Conley, Air and Radiation. . .
Jacqueline Hawkins and Jacqueline Cross, Office of the
General Counsel . . Jean Maguire, Casslee Weatherly,
Michael Reggi and Selma Attido, Administration and
Resources Management. . . Shirley Green and Elizabeth
Ojala. Enforcement and Compliance Monitoring.
The Bronze Medal for Commendable Service was
awarded to Diane Bradway, National Enforcement
Investigations Center, Denver. The NEIC Director's Award
was presented to Thomas Dahl and Gary Young, of that
office . . .
John W. Melone, Director, Hazard Evaluation Division of
OPTS, announced recently that Matt Lorber of HED has
won a 1986 EPA Scientific and Technical Achievement
Award from the Office of Research and Development for a
research paper entitled "The Pesticide Root Zone Model
(PRZM): a Procedure for Evaluating Pesticide Leaching
Threats to Groundwater", which he co-authored with Bob
Carsel and Lee Mulkey of ORD. The award includes a
prize of $2,500, to be shared with the co-authors. Q
Puvak Named One of Top 40
Ken Puvak, a Presidential Management Intern in the
Office of Administration and Resources Management,
recently has been named one of "America's top 40 public
servants, 40 years of age and younger" by Management
Magazine, an OPM publication. Working in the
Management and Organization Division over the past two
and a half years, Ken has handled its regional support and
conducted staff work for the President's Council on
Management Improvement, an interagency group involved
in government-wide management improvement activities.
A former Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire, Ken has a strong
interest in international development work but plans to
stay with the Agency at the end of his two-year
internship, o
Morekas Goes for The Gold
Sam Morekas, retiring after 31 years of Federal service,
has been given a gold medal for distinguished career
service in the management and administration of solid and
hazardous waste programs. He will be remembered by his
peers as the "father" of Agency RCRA procedures that
implemented the permit program and state authorization
requirements. His labors were so well planned and
executed that state authorization regulations have
remained in effect, virtually without emendation, since
1978. He was then selected to direct the Agency's State
and Regional Coordination Branch in the Superfund office.
His tenure was marked by a flexible, common-sense
approach to management of the Agency's partnership with
the states.
Morekas's career has throughout exhibited a "can do"
enthusiasm in the face of seemingly insuperable obstacles.
Congratulations, Sam! n
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Three of Us
Drofile: The Choralers—Region 2
You've heard that venerable gag: a tourist asks how to get
o Carnegie Hall and is told, "Practice!" Well, three Region
2 staff members have practiced and have got there as
members of two New York City choruses.
Tenors Damian Duda and Margaret Thompson (yes,
here are lady tenors) sing with the 113-year-old Oratorio
Society, the city's most venerable chorus, for which
Andrew Carnegie built the Hall. Herman Phillips lends his
voice to the New York Choral Society, one of the City's
newer and most active musical groups.
The ninety-five-year-old Hall has just been put through a
$50 million, seven-month renovation, so both choruses
were able to perform on the main stage during the gala
reopening week in December — Oratorio with its annual
"Messiah" and NY Choral in a Christmas celebration.
Said Phillips, "I recommend that everyone seek out a
local chorus, choir, or even barbershop quartet. It's great
herapy. Besides, a high "C" fortissimo really clears the
sinuses, if it doesn't shatter the crystal or kill you first."
Damian Duda is an environmental engineer working in
^roundwater protection, focusing on oil, gas and
solution-mining industries. He has also been an
environmental consultant, and his experience extends to
surface water protection as well. Duda exults in the brio
and panache of New York City. "Between work and
leisure, the educational potential here is enormous. The
tey, though, is not to delay in taking advantage of it.
You've got to make culture a priority." Duda finds
Derforming with the Oratorio Society helps to complete
he circle of hard labor, intellectual stimulus, limbic
•enewal and self-transcendance.
Margaret Thompson, an attorney, handles the
enforcement of three statutes regulating hazardous waste
and toxic substances. In addition to professional
experience in publishing, she spent some years as a
jrofessor of Greek and Latin classics. "A classical
education is surprisingly germane in legal negotiations —
long-established philosophical principles and an
listorical, planetary perspective support EPA programs by
rebutting'bottom-line' arguments for short-term cost
savings," she observes. "It also stiffens the spine, as in the
old Latin phrase per aspera ad astra (through rigor to
the stars)." Thompson finds vocalization refreshing,
invigorating and an "adventure."
Information Specialist Herman Phillips is a 15-year EPA
veteran and a former chemist. "Music has always been a
vital part of my life. I've been in a chorus, choir or band
(tooting on a clarinet) since my elementary school years.
Herman Philips with New York Chora) Society conductor/
arranger Robert DeCormier.
The NY Choral Society always has some project I can
immerse myself in when I need a little R&R from the
routine of work." Phillips toured with a small group from
the Chorus in Greece during the summer of '83 and '84 —
it was such a ball he may follow up this year with a
sojourn in Yugoslavia.
The 200-voice Oratorio Society chorus is directed by
Lyndon Woodside and has shared the stage with a long
list of geniuses and superstars. The New York Choral
Society was founded in 1958 and is now under the
direction of Robert DeCormier, a noted conductor,
composer and arranger for such artists as Harry Belafonte
and Pete Seeger.
"The Choral Society has done several platters lately, one
of which was nominated for a Grammy; we made one of
the cuts on Peter, Paul and Mary's latest release and we
back up Jessye Norman on her next Christmas album,"
Phillips told the Times. "Recording can be tedious due to
endless retakes and waiting around while the technicians
make adjustments, but the finished product makes it all
worthwhile. It's a kind of immortality." Vita brevis, ars
longa. Q
Margaret Thompson and Damian Duda of Region 2.
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Career
(Continued from front.J \
Recently, many of the members '\
participated in the Baltimore Senior
Management Forum, which confirmed
that the group is headed in the right
direction. The Office of Human
Resources Management will be
consulted on follow-up.
Those who wish to provide input to
any of these efforts should contact one
of the following:
Mavis Bravo 382-3007
Mike Callahan 475-8909
William Coniglio 382-2273
Penny Fenner-Crisp 382-4241
Carol Finch (Vice-Chair) 382-4719
Charles Freed 382-2479
Ed Johnson (Chair) 382-4878
Elizabeth Leovey 557-2162
Steve Lingle 475-8600
Barbara Metzger 8-340-6754
William Rice 8-757-2800
Rosemarie Russo 8-250-3134
D
Women's History—Now It Can Be Told
During March, EPA celebrated the
"history of women in the U.S. This is a
saga largely untold in standard
accounts of this country's origins and
social development and is only
beginning to be appreciated.
The Administrator asked us all to
take a moment to recognize and
celebrate the lives of our
foremothers—women of all races,
ages, cultures, classes, ways of life
and staies of servitude who built this
nation. Research in recent years has
"brought to light a wealth of
information on the many
contributions of women in every
sphere of life, especially as workers in
, and outside the home, but also as
| artists, scientists, scholars and social
, activists throughput the last two
i centuries^We at EPA have only to
looklfs far as Rachel Carson and the
tremendous impetus she gave our own
mission. The Agency might never
have been created without her
insights, courage and painstaking
labor.
"This is also a time," Thomas
declared, "to acknowledge and
commend the talents and
accomplishments of the women at
EPA, who by their competent work,
dedication and leadership contribute
significantly to the mission of this
, Agency and thus to our nation's well
; being."
The Federal Women's Program set
up a panoply of activities for the
occasion throughout the Agency.
Thomas encouraged all members of
the EPA community to participate in
them and join him in carrying out the
, theme of this year's observance:
"Honoring Generations of Courage,
Compassion and Conviction!" o
Around EPA
EPA Day-Care Pre-Enrollment
A highly successful one-
day pre-enrollment was
held Saturday, March 14,
1987 to reserve slots in
the Early Environments
Child Development (Day
Care) Center when it op-
ens for business this Sep-
tember. Priority is given
first to EPA employees,
then to other federal gov-
ernment workers, EPA
on-site contractors and
the general public in this
program for kids 18-
months to five years.
Those interested must
pay a $25 non-refundable
fee to cover processing.
They will be notified
within 45 days as to the
outcome of their applica-
tion. Most slots are
already filled, but you
can get on the waiting
list.
Early Environments,
Inc., which will run the
center, is a private non-
profit corporation of
eleven EPA employees.
The Agency is contribut-
ing lease payments for
the assigned space and
the cost of renovation.
The Center will be lo-
cated on the ground floor
of the West Tower Build-
ing at EPA headquarters.
It will take an initial en-
Events
EPA's Washington Information Center (WIG) hosted its
fourth annual Open House on April 7 and 8. Over 900
EPA managers pnd staffers attended and viewed 35
exhibits and demonstrations of Agency information
systems and services. Co-sponsored by WIG and the Office
of Information Resources Management, the theme this year
was "EPA Technology at Work: Today and Tomorrow." a
rollment of 78 children at
a charge of $68 a week
per capita. A limited re-
serve is being set aside to
help needy parents offset
some of the cost. Operat-
ing hours will be 7:00
AM until 6:00 PM Mon-
day through Friday, but
the Center will close on
federal holidays.
Early Environments is
designed to develop
youngsters' intellectual,
emotional, physical and
social capacities. The
corporation will hire a
Director, Assistant Direc-
tor and nurturant
teachers who understand
this philosophy and are
certified and experienced
in early childhood educa-
tion. Officers and staff
will be cleared with the
Police Department.
For more information
write Early Environ-
ments, P.O. Box 44298,
Washington D.C. 20026,
or contact Daiva Balkus,
382-4083, or other mem-
bers of the enrollment
committee (Bob Hahn,
Beverly Gregory, Shirley
Smith) or any other
corporation member (Syl-
via Correa, Bill Hirzy,
Sherry Kaschak, Mary
MacCaffery, Loree Mur-
ray, Jennifer Williams), n
The EPA Times is published monthly to provide news and informa-
tion for and about EPA employees. Readers are encouraged to submit
news of themselves and of fellow employees, letters of opinion, ques-
tions, comments, and suggestions to the Editor, The EPA Times, Office
of Public Affairs (A-107). Telephone: 382-4359. Information selected
for publication will be edited as necessary in keeping with space
available.
Features Editor: Don Bronkema
Departments Editor: Marilyn Rogers
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