Longtime MoDOT project manager retires

Melissa Wilbers poses next to familiar signage and figures at the Missouri Department of Transportation's District Headquarters building from where she's retiring after 30 years of service to the state of Missouri. Wilbers will now be teaching remotely for the Missouri S&T in Rolla and working part time elsewhere. (Julie Smith/News Tribune)
Melissa Wilbers poses next to familiar signage and figures at the Missouri Department of Transportation's District Headquarters building from where she's retiring after 30 years of service to the state of Missouri. Wilbers will now be teaching remotely for the Missouri S&T in Rolla and working part time elsewhere. (Julie Smith/News Tribune)

A career in public service can be taxing, but for some, it's the ultimate opportunity to make change.

Melissa (Missy) Wilbers has been with the Missouri Department of Transportation's central district in some capacity since June 1991. After the last 20 years as a project manager, she retired from the state Thursday.

"Public service has been such a big part of my life, and it's certainly been rewarding," Wilbers said. "It's been challenging at times, but the rewards definitely outweigh the challenges."

Retiring will be a mixed bag, Wilbers said.

She's looking forward to dedicating more time to the class she's been teaching at the Missouri University of Science and Technology and experiencing the transportation industry as a consultant. However, she said she will miss her team at the department and the role she regularly plays on job sites.

As a transportation project manager, Wilbers oversaw the development process for highway and bridge projects in Boone, Cooper and Howard counties.

Wilbers and the 12-24 people she regularly worked with were responsible for estimating project costs, defining the scope of the project and seeing the project through until it got turned over to engineers for construction.

"Definitely the thing I'll miss most are the people," Wilbers said. "It's a great organization and everyone is here to make a difference. Everybody works hard and being here for almost 30 years, they become your second family."

Wilbers said she has about 27½ years of public service, a vast majority of which has been at MoDOT. She first began as a service attendant, driving a shuttle around Jefferson City and washing cars.

"As I was driving the shuttle back in '91, I got to meet a lot of our senior and executive management," Wilbers said. "I would talk to them about what they did with the department and what their roles were, and that's really what sparked my interest in going back to school."

She also had a personal interest in improving roadway safety.

"As I was growing up, I had several folks who had died in car crashes, and it was just kind of one of those things -- it was a way that I knew I could make an impact and improve safety."

Wilbers kept a list of the people she lost to car crashes in her office as a reminder of who she's working for. Upon her retirement, there were 13 names -- five from high school, five from young adulthood, one MoDOT colleague and two recent deaths.

Recognizing an opportunity early in her career, Wilbers took a leave of absence from MoDOT and went to the University of Missouri to get a civil engineering degree.

She then worked with the Department of Natural Resources for a year and a half before transitioning back to MoDOT as an engineer in 2001.

She's been in her current role for the past 20 years and said she'll miss contributing to the state's effort to make transportation safer, more efficient and generally better.

Although she's retiring from the state, Wilbers will stay busy.

She said she will continue teaching her upper-level transportation engineering course at Missouri S&T, which she started in the fall and does each Thursday night.

Wilbers will also work part-time at a local consulting firm, staying in the transportation industry.

"It's just been very rewarding, and I've been blessed to be able to have a long career here," Wilbers said. "It's hard to believe it's coming to an end."