This month’s Hero Award recipients are Johnna Murray, associate teaching professor of accounting; Rachel Thompson, guest relations manager at the Millennium Student Center; and Shawn Murphy, telecom network engineer for Information Technology Services. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

University of Missouri–St. Louis Chancellor Kristin Sobolik and her cabinet continue to recognize the exemplary efforts of staff and faculty members from across campus by bestowing the UMSL Hero Award on up to three individuals each month.

This month’s honorees are Johnna Murray, associate teaching professor of accounting; Rachel Thompson, guest relations manager at the Millennium Student Center; and Shawn Murphy, telecom network engineer for Information Technology Services.

Johnna Murray

One of Johnna Murray’s guiding principles during her time with UMSL’s Accounting Department has been to show students, not just tell.

That applies to helping students learn their coursework and prep for the CPA, of course, but it also applies to showing them what careers are possible with an accounting degree from UMSL. And that’s why Murray makes sure students in the department have plenty of thought-provoking events available to them every single semester.

“It doesn’t make an impact unless you show it,” she said. “It’s so easy to forget if I say “You can get an accounting degree and a minor in information systems, finance or even a  law degree, it won’t mean as much as meeting a professional who has done just that.  There are CPAs in all types of industries including banking, insurance, law, technology, education and of course public accounting.  There is an accountant in every business you can think of.”

Most of these events are through her role as faculty advisor for Beta Alpha Psi.

“Johnna and her students organize and deliver a wide variety of honor society program offerings designed to connect our students with practicing professionals in industry, public practice, and government,” College of Business Administration Dean Shu Schiller said in nominating Murray for the Hero Award. “Under Johnna’s leadership, their efforts have been a tremendous success. As an example, Johnna and her students led the offering of an Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division ‘Citizens Academy,’ where the IRS came to campus for a day-long activity and instructed our students in the techniques of criminal investigation and arresting individuals. A student now working for IRS CI – who attended the Citizen’s Academy last year as a UMSL student – provided evidence that the program is successful at making professional connections for our students.”

The list of opportunities is lengthy.

“Just this past year, we had the accounting Myth Busters program, and we had folks from the Federal Reserve, the IRS, World Wide Technology and non-profits come in,” Murray said. “In other years, we’ve had compliance folks who are from or were formerly with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. We’ve had an insurance company come in and talk about careers. Clayton Fair talked about interviews and interrogations. We’ve had an accounting firm focused on forensics, which means they’re recreating and calculating what the losses would have been for the insurance company. We took a group down to the Fabulous Fox to talk about the business side of entertainment and accounting. So one of our advisory board members is the CFO of the Fabulous Fox, so we got a tour and talked to him about how they get shows in and the costs for that.”

And, of course, Murray makes sure to connect students with more traditional accounting firms, both locally and nationally.

“Johnna is a driving force behind the annual networking event that brings over 30 firms and businesses to campus to meet our accounting students,” Schiller said. “Many, many students receive offers for internships and full-time jobs. Her efforts are critical to the achievement of the department’s extraordinary placement rate for graduates. Her focus and devotion to the education and placement of our students make Johnna a true UMSL Hero.”

Murray volunteers her time across campus, too. She was a mentor with the inaugural RISE Academy, worked as a judge for a DECA competition and has been a presenter when Girls Inc. was on campus. She serves on the Senate Faculty Committee for Physical Facilities, which is a campus-wide committee, on the UMSL Business Faculty Executive Committee, on the Assurance of Learning Committee for the College of Business and as a non-tenure member of the Tenure and Promotion Committee.

Murray, who started teaching at UMSL with one Saturday class in 2000, then picked up more and more classes until become a full-time faculty member in 2009, loves being at UMSL. She earned her master’s in accounting from UMSL before she started teaching at the school, and she has earned both her Med and DBA while teaching at UMSL. She’s had two papers published this year with co-authors from the DBA program.

“I just feel like I’ve been so fortunate to be here,” she said. “In the Accounting Department, we stay close. We had conversations, trying to stay pretty attuned to what works and what doesn’t with different teaching tactics or different software programs. Those things really help make sure that we have the same philosophy and to keep in touch, just to know what one everyone is doing.”

Rachel Thompson

Rachel Thompson chose UMSL for the first time in 2017 when she enrolled as a freshman after graduating from Marquette High School. She chose UMSL again in 2022, this time accepting a role as guest relations manager at the Millennium Student Center after spending a year as an English teaching assistant in Bar-sur-Aube, France, a little town about two hours by train east of Paris.

And Thompson once again chose UMSL in 2024, enrolling in the MBA program in the College of Business Administration while working at the MSC. Looking back, it’s safe to say her first impressions of the university were positive.

“I enjoyed being involved on campus as an undergraduate, being a part of the Student Government Association, being a part of the University Program Board, being a part of a whole bunch of different student organizations and working on campus,” Thompson said. “It just fosters that sense of community. A lot of people say that with UMSL, you get out what you put in. It might take a bit of effort to find that sense of community, but once you find it, it’s so worth it.”

Recognizing the impact UMSL made on her life, Thompson has made it her goal to help others find that same sense of belonging at the university.

“The main thing is just being able to help foster engagement on campus,” she said. “That was something that I loved doing in undergrad, fostering engagement, and now I get to do it professionally. Being able to create spaces that can help students come together and find their people and find their thing, allowing campus departments to come and professionally develop themselves in conferences and meetings is important.”

Thompson handles all the internal reservations at the MSC, which includes student organizations, administration requests and different campus departments.

“The clients come to us with their ideas and their vision, and we figure out how to turn that into a reality for them,” Thompson said. “We’re setting up their rooms for them. We’re talking with them about their event needs, their AV needs, their setup needs and making that work.”

Thompson said Event Services handled 1,700 bookings in the MSC in 2024, which includes everything from tabling reservations to major conference setups. Thompson is quick to credit the student workers who help the MSC staff – a nice mix of grad students and undergrads – and also pointed out a big reason for the group’s success is the dedication to the mission statement of “Learn, engage and grow.” Lester Stewart, the associate director of UMSL Event Services, nominated Thompson for the Hero Award.

“Rachel plays a huge role in making sure that student groups have a great place to host their meetings,” he said. “She is also a great advocate for students when there are changes in a process.”

She’s an advocate because she understands, from her recent experience, what it’s like for students with groups like UPB trying to learn how to make an impact on other students on campus.

“We were doing all kinds of stuff when I was on UPB,” she said. “Mainly, anything to engage students and keep them on campus. We did lunch-and-learns. We put on the big Mirthweek carnivals, and we booked comedians Marlon Wayans to come to campus.

“My favorite event that we did for UPB was the year we made Mirthweek into a music festival. We rebranded it as MirthFest. We had different local performers perform throughout the day, and then we had Mvstermind perform at the end of the evening. That was a lot of fun. We started brainstorming all of the events for the year in the summer, and then start planning – start calling people, start emailing people, start getting people on campus.”

Thompson’s experience in France was transformative, too, though in a much different way. Thompson, who had dual majors in communications and French as an undergrad, was very much out of her comfort zone early in her year spend in Bar-sur-Aube

“It’s so different,” she said with a laugh. “You can learn a language for years, and then you get there and it’s like, ‘I don’t know anything.’ For like the first two weeks I was there, I was basically a mute. I did not speak. I just listened and listened and absorbed everything for a few weeks. And then I was like, OK, I’ll just try to speak some. The learning curve of language … let’s just say full immersion is the best way to learn.”

And similarly, being involved with UPB and SGA and other organizations as an undergrad was the best way to learn about her future professional career.

“I fell in love with events, and I definitely know this is what I want to do,” Thompson said. “This is a really great foot in the door, a first professional position that I can expand from. I eventually want to pivot more into planning, like I was doing on UPB, executing my own ideas. I really do like creating spaces for people to come together and collaborate and engage, especially after COVID. People are yearning for that.”

She’s also the events chair on the staff council, creating and organizing events to foster the same sense of community with UMSL staff members as she does with the students.

Shawn Murphy

Shawn Murphy never actually personally applied for his job as telecom network engineer at UMSL. His wife, Crystal, did that as a surprise.

Murphy had been working as a customer service technician for Lumen Technologies in St. James, Missouri, since 2006. As the local’s union vice president, he had been searching job openings to find comps to take to the negotiation table. That’s where he saw the UMSL job listing, and he mentioned it to Crystal. They weren’t necessarily actively looking for a change, but both were from the St. Louis region and had casually talked about eventually moving back.

“She sent the application in and then told me about it,” Murphy said. “She said, ‘Let’s see what they have to say. Perhaps we’ll even get a phone call.’ So then I get a call from Ken Voss, who was the CIO at the time, and he wanted to have an interview. And I thought, ‘It doesn’t hurt to hurt to see what they have to offer.’ After two interviews, they offered the position, and I graciously accepted it.”

There certainly was a transition, not only moving his family – the Murphys have four kids – from St. James to the St. Louis area, but also having a different type of job completely.

“I enjoyed my job, but it was hard on me, being 48 years old and still climbing telephone poles every day,” Murphy said. “That was getting rough on my knees and back. I did a lot of the big line maintenance stuff, and it takes a toll on you. There would be times I’d be hanging from a telephone pole for six hours.”

He’s stayed on the floors at UMSL.

“No,” he said with a laugh, “there’s no climbing here.”

With his experience, Murphy has been a tremendous asset to UMSL. He handles the telecommunications for the entire university, anything from fire-alarm numbers to elevators to the phones on desks across campus.

“Shawn works tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that our telephone systems are running smoothly,” said David Gerstenecker, the chief information officer for Information Technology Services. “The impact of his work is felt by everyone that uses a phone. He is a true unsung hero, working diligently behind the scenes to ensure that our communication systems are reliable and efficient.”

Murphy joined the university at a key time, as ITS is revamping campus communication systems.

“We’re working on a new phone system, and I’ve been doing a ton of research on that, trying to figure out where we’re going to go with the future of telephones for the campus,” Murphy said.

The Hero Award is proof his efforts have definitely been noticed.