Alumni Association

Alumni Spotlight

Steven W. Williams, 1977

 

 

A new Life Member of the Missouri Southern Alumni Association. Mr. Williams and his wife, Debbie, reside near the Chesapeake Bay in Davidsonville, Maryland, with their children: John, a Junior Criminal Justice Major at the University of Maryland and Amy, a Junior at South River High School in Edgewater, Maryland.

 

 

Education:

B.A. in Political Science from Missouri Southern State University, Joplin, MO, 1977.

 

Work:

Mr. Williams has been the Secretary and Chief Administrative Officer at the Postal Rate Commission, a small, independent Federal agency, in Washington D.C., since 2001. The Commission is a quasi-judicial regulatory agency led by five Presidential-appointed Commissioners, one of which serves as Chairman.

This Commission is charged with insuring that rates and fees charged by the U.S. Postal Service are set fairly and reflect the cost of providing the service. As Secretary, his role is similar to the Clerk of a Court, while as the CAO his role is to work with the Chairman and Commissioners to oversee the daily management and operations of the Commission, its 57 employees and $9 million budget.

 

Experiences:

Prior to becoming Secretary, Mr. Williams was the Special Assistant to its Chairman, George Omas. Before coming to the Commission, Mr. Williams spent 22 years on the staff of Committees and Subcommittees in the U.S. House of Representatives with Federal government oversight and investigation responsibilities. During that time he had the opportunity to work for and advise U.S. Representatives Edward Derwinski (IL), Benjamin A. Gilman (NY), John Myers (IN) and John McHugh (NY), as well as the Representative that brought him to Washington originally, Gene Taylor (MO).

Under their direction he worked primarily on oversight of the U.S. Postal Service, but also had the opportunity to work on the rebuilding of the Air Traffic Control System after the 1981 controller strike, the creation of a new Federal Employee Retirement System and expansion and funding for the George Washington Carver National Monument and the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

 

What does Missouri Southern mean to you?

'As I look back on the 30 years since I first registered for classes in 1972, I can see that Missouri Southern is where my life began and, as often is the case in the beginning; it was the luck of the draw. I had no concept of what I wanted from life that August but fate intervened and I was assigned, as an advisor, the head of the Political Science Department, Charles Evans, and as Robert Frost said, 'that has made all the difference.' He advised a major of Political Science and, a year later, advised me to serve an Internship in Washington, DC with our new Congressman, Gene Taylor."

 

"I cannot express how far outside my frame of reference something like an Internship in Washington was for me at that time. While I did not get the internship that year I did get it the following year. Which was also due in no small part to Richard W. Massa in Journalism, who let me do a feature for the The Chart on a Missouri Southern alumnus who was the Congressman’s District Manager and is now State Senator, Gary Nodler.

 

I came to Washington for the first time the summer of 1975 and stayed for a year. At the end of that year and at the urging of Congressman Taylor, I left Washington and returned to Missouri Southern to complete my degree requirements graduating with the class of 1977. I returned that fall to work for Congressman Taylor and remained with him in various capacities until his retirement in 1989. Thus, while politically there may still be argument over “when life begins” for me it began right there on that campus.

 

Why did you join the Alumni Association?

As any of my former teachers will tell you, I’m a slow, stubborn learner. I always looked at the benefits to Alumni membership and felt that, since I couldn’t take advantage of them, by living so far away and got back so rarely, that membership was of little value to me. It wasn’t until my own son started college that I began to reflect on my own experiences and realized the tremendous affect Missouri Southern had on my life experiences and the wonderful people that took time to help me learn to think and reason about life’s issues.

 

Charles Evans’ love of the law, Annetta St. Clair’s political insights, Dr. Yost, who taught me to think globally even though I could only see Duenweg; Conrad Gubera’s knowledge of people and their behaviors, Richard Massa in Journalism who taught me that there is always a story and many others, not the least of which was the approachable President, Dr. Leon Billingsly. I joined not for the benefits today but for the benefits from yesterday.

 

Do you have a particular story or memory of Missouri Southern that stands out?

I do. Several years after returning to Congressman Taylor’s employ; I was in charge of designing and putting together the Congressman’s annual summer questionnaire that was sent to each household in the Congressional District and overseeing the tabulation of the data returned to us and analyzed by our summer interns. Congressman Taylor always wanted to see any comments that were written on these questionnaires by constituents and these were always sorted out for him.

 

One day I got a call that he wanted to see me and when I appeared he asked me “do you know this person?” I did, it was the Missouri Southern Professor at the time who taught Public Opinion and Polling. He had written in the margins something to the effect that “had this questionnaire been submitted in my class by a student, I would give it a grade of D.” I called the Professor and once he remembered me, advised him that I had taken his class on polling and evidently needed further study.

 

He was kind enough to give me some insights that, hopefully, improved future Congressional questionnaires.

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