Sentences with phrase «nsf rotator»

At least one former NSF rotator, meanwhile, has learned that the apparent benefits of keeping one's salary and position and not having to become a civil servant leaves them defenseless if tensions arise in the workplace (see Part 2, «Scientists on Loan to NSF Have No Protection if Job Conduct Is Questioned»).

Not exact matches

Andrews is now a «rotator» at the National Science Foundation (NSF), serving as the director of the Division of Computer and Network Systems.

She accepted the offer and worked at NSF as a rotator until she lost her job this spring.

NSF, which in contrast to most other agencies has no intramural researchers of its own, relies on rotators to provide a welcome (even necessary) injection of scientific perspective; an agency run by lifetime public servants could easily lose touch with what's happening in the trenches.

Some 22 of 27 executive - level rotators exceeded the $ 183,000 maximum salary for permanent federal employees — which is also what the NSF director earns.

At a hearing last year before the science committee he chairs, Representative Lamar Smith (R — TX) warned that «if NSF is not capable of handling this type of program, then maybe we should consider legislation that limits the use of rotators.»

NSF's apparent preference for rotators in senior management — for example, all six directorate heads are rotators — has attracted the attention of its inspector general (IG), an independent watchdog over agency practices.

Rotators are rare at most other federal agencies and don't hold executive positions, an NSF survey found.

A new IG report notes that the salary gap between rotators and regular employees is widest at NSF's executive level.

And Representative Don Beyer (D — VA), whose district includes NSF's headquarters and thousands of federal employees, noted that rotators «can cause problems among the rank and file employees [because] they are not necessarily trained managers.»

But NSF's heavy use of these so - called rotators is unique among government research agencies.

Rotators work under a standard agreement that NSF, their institution, or the individual can terminate at any time.

Acting on their own behalf, the section's leaders drafted a three - paragraph letter asking NSF to clarify how rotators — also called IPAs after the 1970 law, the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, that allows agencies to employ them — are treated.

Being a rotator can be a heady experience for an academic, says John Conway, who recently retired as a mathematics professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. «When you first start work here you are often told that you make recommendations only,» Conway wrote in 2005 about serving as a program officer (PO) in NSF's division of mathematics sciences.

Apart from the higher personnel costs, legislators also worry that NSF's reliance on short - term rotators makes the agency vulnerable to a loss of institutional knowledge and programmatic swerves.

He characterizes their intent to raise the issue with potential rotators as tantamount to blackmail: «It is so disappointing, therefore, that you tell us that if we do not acquiesce to your «requests», you and your colleagues will personally tell other potential rotators not to come to NSF.»

And spending time at NSF gives rotators a chance to help shape their discipline and to build contacts that could boost their careers.

(For an unknown but significant percentage of rotators, NSF is a steppingstone to a new job.)

Klimchuk says the policies that Rudolph referenced relate to an agency's authority to hire rotators or to NSF's policies regarding security, teleworking, ethical conduct, and other everyday workplace issues, not the questions he and his colleagues were raising.

Roughly one - third of NSF program officers are rotators, scientists who come to the agency for a few years from another institution to manage programs in their area of expertise.

These transient scientists, called rotators or IPAs, have become an essential part of the NSF culture over the past few decades.

She says that NSF's stellar reputation was one reason she was attracted to the idea of becoming a rotator.

As an NSF «rotator» she managed a variety of programs, including one that provides scholarships for those studying how to combat cyberterrorism.

In an era of tight budgets, rotators represent a hidden tax on NSF's bottom line.

Rotators also often lack the type of inside - the - Beltway knowledge and links to other agencies that could leverage NSF's investments.

But there's also a downside to NSF's heavy use of rotators.

Rudolph begins his reply by saying «I do not understand your «request»» for information about rotators because those policies «are already contained and referenced in the current agreements between NSF and the grantee institution.»

The worries have triggered three reports by NSF's in - house watchdog, the Office of Inspector General (IG), that have revealed, among other things, that a rotator can cost NSF as much as 23 % more than a regular government employee doing the same job.

«While NSF's permanent staff are highly knowledgeable and capable,» explains a recent white paper on the use of rotators, «the ever changing global science, engineering, and education landscape requires NSF to continually complement its permanent staff with the expertise of individuals from the broader research and education community.»

Indeed, NSF itself credits rotators with keeping the agency on the cutting edge of science.

Instead, she was a «rotator,» on leave from SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, California, under a program that NSF uses far more than any other federal research agency (see Part 1, «NSF Urged to Improve Oversight of Program for Scientists on Loan»).

A former deputy NSF director who is familiar with the case worries that the incident could cause many scientists and engineers thinking of coming to NSF as a rotator to rethink such a move.

Even so, she has written to her representatives in Congress and to NSF Director France Córdova asking them to examine what she labels an «Orwellian process» for vetting rotators like herself.

The heads of most directorates and a majority of division directors are rotators who spend only a few years at NSF.