The IPA appointment as a professional-development learning platform

Federal agencies make most of their Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) mobility assignments with academia in order to bring personnel with specialized experience into the federal government. Federal detailing and non-federal contracting are also used as programmatic needs arise. In this poster, an IPA mobility assignment in the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) is described that took place from August 2009 to August 2011. The title of the assignment was Senior Scientific Coordinator and the range of responsibility was extensive. The timing of the assignment coincided with significant personnel changes at the senior management level within DOE and this worked to the benefit of the strategic planning nature of the assignment. The implementation of the recommendations of the Physics 2010: Plasma Science NRC report will be outlined. The positive outcomes from the IPA experience will be put into the context of suggesting that university professors could find intellectual stimulation and professional reward, while serving the plasma physics community, by participating in an IPA.