ORSSAB Member Corkie Staley is Committed to Stewardship of Local Environment

Corkie Staley’s term on the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board (ORSSAB) is a return engagement. “I was on the board from 2000-2002. During that time I served on the Stewardship Committee and was the board secretary.” ORSSAB is a volunteer citizens’ panel that provides advice and recommendations to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on its Environmental Management (EM) program of the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR).

Family responsibilities led her to decline a second term, but when she retired from Oak Ridge schools, she reapplied and was reappointed to the board in 2012.

Staley grew up in Fairmont, W. Va. She began college at Fairmont State, but when the family moved to Charleston, she finished at West Virginia State with a bachelor’s degree in education. She came to Tennessee in 1982 and earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Tennessee.

In 1983, she began working as a nursery school teacher at First United Methodist Church in Oak Ridge. She joined the Oak Ridge Schools as a teaching assistant at Woodland Elementary School in 1986 and was hired as a full time teacher there a few months later. Her 25-year teaching career was spent at Woodland Elementary where she had experience teaching students in kindergarten, first, and fourth grades. "I enjoyed my time as a teacher, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet and teach so many wonderful students."

During her teaching career, she was a member of the Oak Ridge Education Association, the Tennessee Education Association, and the National Education Association. She served two years as president of the Oak Ridge Education Association and was elected for a two-year term to represent Anderson, Knox, and Loudon County teachers on the Tennessee Education Association Board of Directors.

Staley has been quite active on ORSSAB since returning for her second and third terms. She served as chair of the Stewardship Committee before it merged with the EM Committee. She now co-chairs the EM & Stewardship Committee. “The primary reason I serve on ORSSAB is my deep concern for and interest in the stewardship of the local environment,” she says. “I believe every stakeholder needs to be represented on ORSSAB and that the community needs to be aware of the cleanup effort on the ORR.

“By serving on the board I have the opportunity to participate in discussions and decision making by taking an active role in the development of recommendations to DOE concerning the cleanup program, the release of DOE land for commercial and industrial use, the disposal of contaminants, the use of DOE funding for EM, and the future of the ORR.”

In addition to committee and board work, Staley has visited other DOE sites at Hanford, Wash.; Los Alamos, Nevada National Security Site, and Yucca Mountain sites in Nevada; the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Idaho Falls. She has attended several EM SSAB Chairs’ meetings and plans to attend the upcoming meeting in April at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

“It is my goal to learn all I can about ORR legacy waste, the environmental impact of the Manhattan Project, and scope of the cleanup program so that I can make reasonable, logical, and informed suggestions for recommendations. The presentations by DOE EM personnel are very informative and offer the opportunity to ask questions and have details explained so that ORSSAB members can discuss and research topic of interest prior to a recommendation being formulated.”

Staley also serves as ORSSAB representative on the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History, which developed out of work begun by ORSSAB.

ORSSAB meets the second Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m. at the DOE Information Center in the Office of Science and Technical Information, 1 Science.gov Way on the east side of Oak Ridge, fronting the 100 block of Oak Ridge Turnpike. Additional information about the board is available on the internet at www.energy.gov/orssab or by calling (865) 241-4583 or 241-4584.