UTCM Staff Directory

Melissa S. Tooley, Ph.D., P.E.

Director

Dr. Melissa S. Tooley joined TTI in May, 2006. She is the former Director of the Mack-Blackwell National Rural Transportation Center (MBTC) at the University of Arkansas, and she served as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Arkansas and the University of Florida. She has a decade of civil engineering consulting experience on projects involving roadway design, flood control, construction management, forensic engineering and civil infrastructure improvements.

Dr. Tooley is a past President of the National Council of University Transportation Centers and immediate past President of ARTBA’s Research and Education Division, where she currently serves on the Board of Directors. She is a member of the Board of Regents of the Eno Transportation Foundation and is a former Eno Transportation Fellowship Recipient. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, she was selected “Young Engineer of the Year” in 1995 by the Arkansas Society of Professional Engineers (ASPE). She serves on two Transportation Research Board committees – Planning Needs and Requirements for Small and Medium Sized Communities and the TRB Committee for Education and Training. Dr. Tooley was a Master’s and Ph.D. level recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowship, sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration. As a graduate student, she was selected as MBTC’s 1994 Student of the Year.

Martha Raney Taylor

Business Manager

In two decades with Texas A&M, Martha has supported a variety of academic, research and business functions of the university: as assistant to the department head of Biology, assistant to the director of a research institute in the College of Science, program coordinator for a research council and as program coordinator for a high profile, $16M research project in ambulance telecommunications technology. But her most challenging role prior to the UTCM was with the Bonfire Memorial, in which she managed communications and planning among the hundreds involved in the construction and dedication of the Bonfire Memorial honoring the twelve students killed in the 1999 collapse of Texas A&M’s Bonfire. Martha joined the UTCM in May 2007.