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Employees' opinions are needed to help laboratory management assess Argonne's strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement.
Human Resources' Employee Opinion Survey takes about 20 minutes to complete, and individual input is confidential. All employees are asked to complete the survey no later than July 21, 2000.
The survey is available on the World Wide Web at http://www. isrsurveys.org/argonne) using the password "argonne." The survey may be completed at work or at home. Answers will be sent directly to International Survey Research Association (ISR).
ISR will remove all individual identification from responses, analyze the data and forward a survey summary to the laboratory. After tabulation, ISR will destroy the surveys.
Action plans based on the summary will be prepared by division management, reviewed by the associate laboratory directors and the laboratory director, and conveyed to employees by division management. Summaries of survey results will be available at division offices.
Employees who do not have access to a computer may receive a paper copy from their division or department offices. Surveys will also be available in each Argonne library, the Diversity Program Office at Argonne-East, or from Terry Brooks (RPS-HR) at Argonne-West.
Paper copies should be completed and returned to the Diversity Program, Building 201.
Employees with questions or concerns, or who need further accommodations to complete the survey, should contact the Diversity Program Office at Argonne-East at ext. 2-3021 or Brooks at Argonne-West at ext. 3-7144 (terry.brooks@anl.gov).
The U.S. Department of Energy and The University of Chicago have extended the contract for management and operation of Argonne through September 2004.
"We are pleased to continue our second half-century of partnership with Argonne," said University of Chicago President Hugo Sonnenschein.
DOE and the university had originally agreed to a five-year contract signed on September 30, 1999. An initial 90-day term and subsequent extensions were agreed to by both parties with the goal of providing additional time for the university to fulfill DOE's objective of a broad and inclusive search for highly qualified candidates for a new laboratory director.
"DOE has been impressed with the diligence and commitment shown by the university in seeking excellent candidates for this important leadership position," said Robert L. San Martin, manager of the DOE Chicago Operations Office, which oversees the Argonne contract.
"The university has kept us well informed about its efforts. Although the search has not yet been successful, we are confident that the university is making a good faith effort to fulfill the department's expectations," San Martin said.
The former laboratory director, Dean Eastman, left Argonne in June 1998 to return to research and teaching.
Argonne-West's 49th Annual Summer Picnic will be held Saturday, July 22, at Heise Hot Springs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Activities this year will include children's games, a fun jump, volleyball, swimming and golfing. Other attractions include live music, pie-throwing contest, water balloon toss and a variety of food and beverages.
All Argonne employees and their families are invited to the annual get-together. Admission is free.
Argonne's counterintelligence and security programs have received a boost with the appointment of Counterintelligence Program Manager Larry Collins and the establishment of the Office of Safeguards and Security under Acting Director Bill Vroman.
Collins
is a 27-year veteran of the FBI. From 1995-1998 he was
special agent in charge of the bureau's Chicago Field
Office, the fourth largest FBI office in the country. He
directed all investigative and administrative operations in
the region.
Since retiring from the FBI in 1998, he has served as vice president and director of Midwest operations for Investigative Group of Chicago. In that role, he managed multi-state investigations and developed investigator training programs for Fortune 500 companies.
As counterintelligence program manager, Collins will direct and manage Argonne's expanding counterintelligence program. He will establish directions and goals, direct counterintelligence investigations and manage counterintelligence aspects of the foreign visits and assignments program. He will also develop Argonne's counterintelligence awareness program for all employees, keep laboratory management informed and serve as the principal laboratory interface with the U.S. Department of Energy's Counterintelligence Program.
Vroman
is associate director of the Reactor Program Services
Division at Argonne-West. He has a background in safeguards
and security, having managed the non-destructive assay
laboratory, which deals with special materials. He has also
worked at Argonne-West as a chemist.
The director of the Office of Safeguards and Security is responsible for a variety of related services at the laboratory, and is a central point of contact for audits and assessments. His areas of responsibility include:
The
security department, now known as "Security Programs"
Property
and inventories management, now known as "Special
Materials and Property"
Foreign
travel, visits and assignments
Export
control
Members of the Office of Safeguards and Security will also coordinate with Chief Information Officer Tim Kuhfuss and the manager of cyber security, Paul Krystosek.
Luis Nuñez (CMT) has been appointed by Illinois Governor George Ryan to the board of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA). Nuñez is one of two new members appointed for the six-year term.
As a member of the board, Nuñez will meet once every two months to oversee operations and policies of the academy.
IMSA, located in Aurora, is an academy where high school students take advanced courses in sciences and the humanities, with half their coursework in math and science. IMSA's goals are to improve and transform mathematics and science teaching and learning for high school students and to provide professional development for teachers and administrators.
Nuñez does research on nuclear waste management, concentrating on magnetically assisted chemical separation. In 1998, he received the Outstanding Technical Achievement Hispanic Engineering Award.
"I consider being at Argonne on the frontier of science," Nuñez said. "And as a board member of the academy, I will have the opportunity to be on the frontier of education."
Incorrect use of Federal Express (FedEx) drop boxes at Argonne-East, and missing data on airbills, can add hours to the time it takes PFS-Shipping and Receiving to determine who at Argonne sent the package.
These delays can be avoided if employees who use FedEx remember the following guidelines:
Use drop
boxes only for printed material that fits inside the drop
box and is being sent within the United States.
Take
international and oversized packages to Building 5 with a
completed shipping order (ANL-126C) before 2 p.m.
International destinations include Canada and Mexico.
Complete
the billing information section, including a cost code on
Line 2 ("Your Internal Billing Reference").
Employees can get their cost codes from their divisions or
departments.
Check
the "FedEx Priority Overnight" box under the
service section on the airbill for delivery the next day by
noon, or "FedEx 2Day" for second-day delivery. The
government rate applies only to these two services.
FedEx drop boxes are located at Buildings 201, 208, 360, 401 and 900. Final pickup at drop boxes is 6 p.m. To request FedEx airbills and supplies, call ext. 2-3307. For more information, call Shipping at ext. 2-2930 or 2-2934.
The Argonne Speakers' Bureau needs staff employees to talk to the community about the research being done at the laboratory. The Speakers' Bureau helps take some of the mystery out of the laboratory and builds goodwill between the community and Argonne.
Talks are usually 20-30 minutes long, with 10 minutes afterward for questions. Speakers can give a general talk on research being done at Argonne using the slide show OPA provides, or they can talk about their own research.
The best speakers can explain their research in ways easy for laypersons to understand.
Anyone comfortable with public speaking can join the Speakers' Bureau. For information, call Cindy Wilkinson (OPA) at ext. 2-5561.
The seminar on Pranic (Energetic) Healing scheduled for July 11 has been cancelled.
The next alternative medicine seminar will be held Wednesday, July 12. The topic will be "Integrated Holistic Healthcare" by Pieter Van Heule.
Human Resources has videos of the lecture series. To borrow a specific video, call Marge Vaught (HR) at ext. 2-2985.
A representative from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company ("MetLife") will visit Argonne-East on three consecutive Tuesdays, July 11, 18, and 25, to meet with individual employees for insurance comparisons and quotes for the "METPAY" group automobile and homeowner insurance program.
To schedule an appointment, call (630) 810-0346, ext. 143. Before each appointment, employees should fax their auto policy renewal statements to Craig Riddick at (630) 810-1628.
Prudential interest rates for the third quarter are:
| Product | Rate | Contributions From | Earned Through |
| Prudential Fixed Interest* | 6.3% | 7/1/00 - 6/30/01 | 6/30/01 |
| Prudential Guaranteed | 6.5% | 7/1/00 - 9/30/00 | 12/31/01 |
(* Only available to non-staff participants)
Interest rates for Teacher's Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA) products for the third quarter are:
| Product | Rate | Contributions From | Earned Through |
| TIAA Traditional | 8% | 7/1/00 - 9/30/00 | 2/28/01 |
| TIAA Supplemental | 7.5% | 7/1/00 - 9/30/00 | 2/28/01 |
Form EMO-197, "Chemical Waste Disposal Requisition" has been revised and renamed WMO-197.
Several changes have been made to make the form easier to use. The most notable changes are to the non-radioactive certification and the Health Physics section.
The old EMO-197 forms will be accepted until the end of the calendar year, but users are encouraged to begin using the new form immediately and recycle the old forms.
To request the new forms, call the Waste Management Operations department office at ext. 2-5865.
Last week's article on the froth flotation process, recognized byDiscovermagazine, should have included the other developers of the technology: Ed Daniels (ES), Jim Karvelas (ET), Joe Pomykala (ES) and Bayram Arman.
