Note: This story was updated at 12 p.m.

Sue Cange, former head of the federal government’s cleanup program in Oak Ridge, has been appointed as a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, a spokesperson said Wednesday.

It’s a two-year appointment as a visiting scholar in civil and environmental engineering that started July 5, Vanderbilt University spokesperson Jim Patterson said. Cange has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in environmental engineering from Vanderbilt University.

Cange remains a paid U.S. Department of Energy employee, Patterson said. At Vanderbilt, she will help to establish a nuclear environmental engineering curriculum and internship program.

Cange is a former manager of the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management. She had most recently worked at U.S. Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C. In December, she was named principal deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management, or EM. She had previously been interim principal deputy assistant secretary, temporarily serving in the role formerly filled by Mark Whitney, who took a job in the private sector. Whitney is also a former manager of the Environmental Management program in Oak Ridge.

In January, Cange became acting assistant secretary for environmental management, the Exchange Monitor reported. She replaced Monica Regalbuto on a temporary basis, at about the time that President Donald Trump was inaugurated. Regalbuto was the Obama administration’s final appointee to the position that oversees DOE’s $6-billion-a-year legacy nuclear cleanup program.

But last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that James M. Owendoff had been promoted to principal deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Environmental Management, or EM, replacing Cange. Owendoff had served as a senior adviser to the assistant EM secretary since January 2010, DOE said. [Read more…]