Grant Ebert started at UMSL with 30 hours of college credit hours from Fredericktown High School and is on track to finish his Accelerated Master’s program this spring, several months before he turns 23 years old. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
As Grant Ebert thought through his future college options while growing up in Fredericktown, Missouri, the University of Missouri–St. Louis was always in the conversation.
He was already familiar with UMSL because his mom, Stephanie, graduated from the College of Nursing in 1996 and still works as a registered nurse. And as he researched his own potential choices, he became even more familiar with UMSL through the university’s stellar reputation.
When he was in eighth grade and considering optometry as a career path, UMSL always popped up at the top of those rankings. When he switched his focus to accounting during high school – after productive conversations with family members who were in the field – UMSL’s department again bubbled up to the top of his list.
“I looked up the top CPA exam pass-rate schools in Missouri, and UMSL was right in the top three at the time, so I decided to come here,” he said. “And my sister, Olivia, was transferring from Arkansas State University to finish up her master’s degree in social work, and so she came here with me. We stayed in an apartment together my freshman year. I’ve been very happy with my choice. The program, especially the accounting program in the business school, is phenomenal. I’ve really enjoyed all of my teachers and everyone, all the students that I’ve met here. It’s been great.”
Ebert has made the most of his time at UMSL. He’s part of the Accelerated Master’s program; he finished his bachelor’s degree this spring – he was named the Outstanding Accounting Student for the school year and was a student marshal at commencement – and is on track to complete his master’s next spring. Because he came to UMSL with 30 hours of college credits he’d earned while at Fredericktown High School, he will finish his time at UMSL with a master’s degree in accounting at 22 years old.
“The Accelerated Master’s program has allowed me to take graduate-level coursework at undergraduate pricing, which helped me save a lot of money,” Ebert said. “It helped me speed up my master’s degree significantly. UMSL has really prepared me for the workforce. I can see the work that we did in class transferring over into the internships that I’ve done in the accounting fields.”
Ebert is finishing up his second accounting internship, at CliftonLarsenAllen, this summer. The experience has been informational and educational.
“I’m in audit for state and local government, so I’m working on governmental audits,” Ebert said. “That’s really about ensuring that taxpayer dollars are being put forward for the right purpose. Obviously, we elect politicians into office, and we want to make sure that they’re using those taxpayer dollars the correct way. We work on a lot of clients here in the St. Louis region. There have been a lot of neat opportunities for me to see the actual client work.”
Ebert landed the CLA internship through an UMSL connection. He earned a scholarship from the Missouri Society of Certified Public Accountants coming out of high school, and he met UMSL accounting alum Nick Graff, then a tax manager at CLA, at the MOCPA awards celebration. Graff gave Ebert his business card and told him to reach out if he ever had questions or needed help. In the fall of 2023, Ebert reached out to Graff to inquire about internships at CLA, and Graff helped make the summer 2025 internship a reality.
Ebert had previously done an internship at Maloney, Wright & Robbins in Farmington.
“I did a little bit of tax work but mostly audit work,” Ebert said. “It was obviously on a smaller scale than what I’m doing this summer, but it was very vital for me to see the way that they do stuff there compared to this summer. I like both. I think there are pros to both, and it’s definitely helped me learn a lot from both firms.”
When Ebert first started at UMSL, he wasn’t thinking about much outside of the classroom. But it wasn’t long after he started that he met Aurian Farhadi and Brett Paubel, two upperclassmen involved in the Accounting Club. They asked him what he wanted to get out of his UMSL experience, aside from the education, and told him a little about their experience. Ebert started attending Accounting Club meetings and wanted to become more involved.
After serving for a year as the administrative officer, he then served as the vice president. For the 2025-26 school year, he will be the club’s president.
“I have some big shoes to fill,” Ebert said. “Angela Truesdale was the president last year, Brett Paubel the year before and Aurian Farhadi before that. Those are three big hitters. They really set the club up for success, so there’s not a lot that I want to change because I think that we’re headed in the right direction. We’re already there, really. I think there are some small areas we can improve to keep it sustained for the future.”
Ebert has already implemented one update: He created a LinkedIn page for the Accounting Club, as a way to communicate with current students and to allow alumni to see what’s happening. There are other new ideas, including an alumni social, in the works, too.
That isn’t his only leadership role at UMSL. When Shu Schiller took the role as dean of the Ed G. Smith College of Business, one of the first things she did was create a Dean’s Student Advisory Board, with a small group of students who were nominated by faculty members.
“That has really opened a lot of doors for me,” Ebert said. “It’s really an interesting role because it allows me to see what’s going on behind closed doors in a business school. We aren’t really making the decisions, but the dean wants to hear the students’ perspective on different topics.”
And the more Ebert became involved at UMSL, the more he wanted to become involved in other areas. Through UMSL, he’s participated in the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program the past two years, working at the Jefferson County Library. Ebert and other volunteers work with lower-income individuals and families who need help with their tax returns. The value to students like Ebert who volunteer isn’t just the experience of doing someone else’s taxes, but also learning to adjust as problems arise.
“A lot of times they show up without their social security information, or they’ll show up without their income,” Ebert said. “That’s the great opportunity, that you actually get to sit face-to-face with clients and actually talk to them about their income for the year, and get to really do the work. I do the return, and then I send it to a reviewer. They review it, and then we print it out and send them home. And it’s all e-filed, so it immediately goes to the IRS.”
This year, he’s also serving as a graduate teaching assistant in Marcia Countryman’s managerial accounting class. It’s yet another example of Ebert taking advantage of an opportunity at UMSL to expand his knowledge and experience base. He helped tutor eighth-grade students while he was a senior in high school, but otherwise he doesn’t have much experience in the area.
“It’s a required course for general business students, and it’s the second accounting class that they’ll take,” Ebert said. “If you’re not focused on accounting, it probably is a pretty difficult class, so that’s why they have a teaching assistant position for this class, to really help those students who aren’t majoring in accounting get through the class and pass it successfully.”
The goal, Ebert said, is to help others like he’s been helped.
“If I had to give a piece of advice for new students at UMSL, it would just be to get involved on campus, to see what opportunities there are here and meet people face to face,” he said. “There’s so much that goes on here that I feel like students aren’t necessarily aware of. But if they look around and see the posters that are out, they look online and see the meetings that are happening, there are so many things that they can be a part of and really help them grow their educational career.”
