Matt Markivee has been raising his 6-year-old daughter, Amelia, and 4-year-old son, Charles, as a single parent while working full-time as a public information specialist for the Missouri House of Representatives and pursuing his bachelor’s degree in communication and certificate in public relations as a fully online student at UMSL. (Photo courtesy of Matt Markivee)

Matt Markivee doesn’t have long to wait until December, when he’ll mark the culmination of a five-year quest by walking across the commencement stage and accepting his diploma from the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

“It’s an amazing feeling when you see the fruits of your labor,” said Markivee, who is eager to have family members share in the moment as he earns his degree in communication and certificate in public relations. “I will mail out the invitations just to let people know, ‘Hey, look what I was able to do.’”

But for Markivee, a single dad, the most important witnesses will be his 6-year-old daughter, Amelia, and 4-year-old son, Charles.

He wants them to watch the celebration that unfolds in the Mark Twain Athletic Center during commencement ceremonies. He hopes seeing can help them understand the significance of all that’s he has accomplished.

They might already know better than he realizes.

Markivee’s kids have watched their dad balance the responsibilities of being a single parent and a full-time employee while working toward his degree. They saw him divide up his life down to the minute, so that he could make dinner, put them to bed, tidy up around the house, report to work on time or stay on top of his school assignments.

“It’s been such a motivation to show my kids, ‘Hey, education matters. Homework matters,’” Markivee said. “There are nights that they beg me, ‘Hey, can we stay up and watch a movie?’ I have to say, ‘I can’t. I’ve got homework, and that’s the most important thing. I have to read this.’

“My kids have watched me do homework and write things and do video calls with other classmates and work on projects. They’ve been watching from the background. They’ve absorbed some of that.”

Taking a second look at college

Markivee, who lives in Camdenton, Missouri, near the Lake of the Ozarks, began the pursuit of his degree in the summer of 2020, enrolling in an online course through State Fair Community College as the COVID-19 pandemic was reaching its apex and lockdowns remained a part of everyday life.

Markivee, who’d recently left active duty service in the U.S. Air Force, decided that he wanted to do something to fill his extra free time. He was also thinking practically, as a then-married man with a daughter under the age of 2, and figured there could be some payoff to learning new skills to bolster his future job prospects in video production, journalism or communication.

But he did not start out with a long-term plan.

“I never thought that I would get a bachelor’s degree,” he said. “Nobody in my family had one.”

Markivee, a native of Florissant who grew up in St. Charles County, had also tried college once after graduating from Fort Zumwalt West High School and found it a poor fit.

But older, and with more life experience – including working as a broadcast journalist in the public affairs unit while stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama – Markivee quickly discovered he had a different outlook on education.

“I realized college is totally for me,” he said. “I realized it wasn’t as challenging as I thought it was going to be.”

He was a more disciplined student and found online classes allowed him to fit the coursework into the rest of his life, including the arrival of his son and a new job as TV operations manager and broadcast news reporter at KRMS-TV (Channel 32), a low-power television station that launched in Lake Ozark, Missouri, in 2021.

“It just kind of picked up from there,” Markivee said. “I began taking more and more classes, and within a few years, I had earned my associate degree in journalism.”

‘Is this really viable?’

The breakup of Markivee’s marriage had threatened to derail his educational journey before he finished his work at State Fair. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle the demands of school while suddenly caring for his kids – then 1 and 3 – as a single parent.

“All my family is in St. Louis, and I’m down at the Lake, three hours away, so it became a question of, ‘Is this really viable?’” Markivee said. “Can I really do this and be the father and employee that I need to be?”

He credits friends and family for convincing him to continue with his studies.

“They told me, ‘The time is going to pass anyway, and you’re going to wish you did this. It might be a challenge, but you can do it,’” he said.

Markivee said he leveraged technology to help him, building a fully smart home that could assist with managing household tasks and even buying an electric car so he didn’t have to spend time filling up a gas tank.

He knew he wanted to continue beyond his associate degree and earn his bachelor’s, and he started looking into programs that would allow him to do that.

“I did some research about schools that had fully online bachelor’s and master’s programs in communications, and everywhere I looked, people were pointing at UMSL,” Markivee said. “They kept saying, ‘This is the way you want to go. You get a great education. It fits with your schedule. It’s easy to make it work for you.’ Sure enough, it’s been the perfect fit.”

Valuable lessons

Markivee received the Curators Scholarship after being admitted to UMSL, which has helped cover most of the cost of his education. He’s found the coursework engaging, particularly in his major.

“They’ve always been right up my alley, and it was stuff that I had a foundation in but that I got to really build upon,” he said. “Since it’s all online, you don’t get to know your classmates personally, but you get to read what they say and how they are learning it in the same way that you are. I really enjoyed getting to expound upon what they were learning, and say, ‘That’s a good point, and here’s a kind of a personal anecdote about a time that I used that exact same lesson.’

“It’s helped me reconsider some past experiences and how they might have been different because of the lessons that I learned.”

Markivee found out about UMSL’s certificate in public relations and realized, by changing up a few planned electives, he could earn it alongside his degree.

The certificate program is not typically offered fully online, however, because of a required Communication Campaigns course involving a lot of hands-on work with a local nonprofit organization.

“Matt reached out to me about the certificate to see if there was anything we could do so he could earn it,” said Teaching Professor Jill Alexander, who serves as the coordinator for the PR certificate program, in the Department of Communication and Media. “We decided to experiment with including him via ZOOM for every class and every client meeting.”

As part of the course, he and his classmates developed a video to support the nonprofit HavenHouse St. Louis. His classmates shot the video, and he did the editing and voice work.

Markivee believes having the PR certificate will help him stand out in the future.

“Mass media and digital video, that’s stuff that I had a background in,” Markivee said. “But I didn’t have a background in strategic communication. To be the most well-rounded communicator, I wanted to learn every angle of communication.”

Advancing his career

Markivee, after recently completing a summer school course in astronomy, is getting set to begin his final semester. But he’s already taken a big step forward in his career.

In January, he landed a position as a public information specialist with the Missouri House of Representatives. He was referred for the role by a former member of the House he got to know through his work in television near Lake of the Ozarks.

It’s been a thrill to work near the levers of power in the Missouri State Capitol and see how the cogs of government function.

Markivee’s job is all-encompassing and includes speechwriting, proofreading press releases and posting to social media, and it also allows him to use his skills as a videographer.

He has also been working with members of the majority caucus, including Speaker of the House Jon Patterson, to develop strategy for producing content in the future.

“I’ve gotten to know the legislators and learn their priorities, and I get to help them find the best way to communicate that to the public,” Markivee said. “That’s what I want to do.”

Markivee’s managed to adjust to the new position while still juggling his school and parenting duties. He expects things to get a little bit easier after graduation, but he’s really enjoyed being a student.

“I love getting to chat with people who are interested in the things that I’m interested in learning and building upon that knowledge,” he said. “Getting to the end is definitely exciting, but now I have to find out what more there is to learn because I don’t think I could ever go back to not being a learner.”