Susan Cange, who was removed this week as acting head of the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup program, is headed to her alma mater, Vanderbilt University, to work on developing a sustainable nuclear workforce, an informed source said Wednesday.
DOE announced Tuesday that agency veteran James Owendoff would replace Cange as both acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Environmental Management (EM). This is his third stint at EM, where he has previously served as acting assistant secretary.
Cange took the No. 2 spot at EM in December, after managing cleanup of the department’s Oak Ridge site in Tennessee. She became acting EM boss just as President Donald Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20.
“Susan Cange is a Visiting Scholar in the civil and environmental engineering program. It is a two-year appointment. Her start date is July 1,” a Vanderbilt spokesperson wrote in a Wednesday email.
Cange received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in environmental engineering from the Nashville, Tenn., university.
Meanwhile, other long-tenured, senior DOE EM officials are also trickling out of the office’s Washington headquarters.
According to the source who discussed Cange’s new gig, Monica Regalbuto — the full-time assistant secretary for environmental management Cange replaced after President Barack Obama left office — left EM headquarters June 23 to become an associate director at the Idaho National Laboratory. Regalbuto had served as a senior technical adviser to the EM office since January.
Also leaving headquarters is Betsy Connell, DOE EM’s chief of staff in the Regalbuto era. Connell recently updated her LinkedIn profile to identify herself as a DOE “manager.” Connell, the source said, is returning to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., where she began a DOE career some 30 years ago.
