This month’s Hero Award recipients are (from left) Stacy Pearson, senior academic advisor in the College of Nursing; and Jennifer Condon, technology resource associate in the Department of Communication and Media; and Meghann Humphries, associate teaching professor in the Department of Biology. (Photos by Derik Holtmann and courtesy of Jennifer Condon)
University of Missouri–St. Louis Interim Chancellor Chris Spilling and his 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 Stacy Pearson, senior academic advisor in the College of Nursing; and Jennifer Condon, technology resource associate in the Department of Communication and Media; and Meghann Humphries, associate teaching professor in the Department of Biology.
Stacy Pearson
Pearson first became acquainted with higher education admissions through a work-study position as an undergraduate at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. In her admissions assistant role, Pearson pitched in wherever she was needed.
“I would talk to prospective students on the telephone; I would host students for overnight visits; I would give campus tours,” she said. “That is really where my love for working in higher education began.”
Pearson was majoring in theater, but by senior year, she decided not to pursue performing full-time. Despite her love for the work in the admissions office, she didn’t realize it could be a future career. After graduation, she worked in retail for a bit and then took jaunts to Nebraska then Arizona with her husband who was serving in the United States Air Force.
When the family returned to Missouri in 2003, Pearson found a job as a special events coordinator with undergraduate admissions at Washington University in St. Louis. She’s never looked back, spending more than two decades helping students get the most out of their college experiences.
At WashU, she went on to serve as a program coordinator for the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship and admissions and recruiting coordinator for graduate programs for the Olin Business School.
“It was the one-on-one student engagement piece that I really fell in love with,” Pearson said. “The roles that I had at WashU were in administrative support, but I was lucky enough to still be able to keep that student engagement piece. It’s given me energy, and I feed off that. So, that has been the aspect of the job that I’ve loved so much throughout all the different positions that I’ve had.”
Around 2017, Pearson began looking for a change and came to UMSL to serve as the academic advisor for graduate programs in the College of Nursing. At the same time, she also earned her master’s degree in higher education administration at UMSL in an effort to better serve the students she was advising. About five years later, she began her current role as senior academic advisor to undergraduates in the College of Nursing.
Her primary goal is to ensure that students feel supported, and they trust her to guide them through their degree programs in a timely fashion. As a first-generation college student, she knows how important that is and aims to provide a better advising experience than she received.
“I was very much naive, very much a fish out of water,” she said. “I did not have any idea what I was doing, but I just kind of figured it out. I’ve always been the type of person to just figure it out. But I wanted to ensure that students did not have an experience similar to the one that I had, especially given UMSL’s student population. We do have a lot of first-generation college students. We do have a lot of nontraditional students that need additional support.”
Pearson also has a passion for helping veterans in higher education. During her master’s program, much of her work focused on the topic. She became interested in it after seeing the challenges her husband faced going to back to school after his service in the Air Force.
When the College of Nursing launched an innovative 68Charlie LPN-to-BSN program, she knew she had to get involved with it.
“I immediately volunteered to serve as the academic advisor for those students because it’s allowing me to be able to work with a student population that I really have a passion for supporting,” Pearson said. “I’m really, really excited as that program gets off the ground this fall. I think we’ve got about 17 students who have committed to coming, and I’ve met with every single one of them. It’s just been such a joy, and I’m excited to see where that goes.”
Jennifer Condon
For the past decade, Condon has had a hand in the St. Louis media landscape’s past, present and future. Condon, an UMSL alum, comes from a family with multi-generational ties to the St. Louis media community. Her parents both worked in the engineering department of KTVI, and their passion for the industry inspired her to pursue a career in media that has spanned several roles.
That career began at UMSL as a communication and media studies major. After graduating with her bachelor’s degree in 2016, Condon came back to the university to serve as technology resource associate. For the past nine years, she has been an essential pillar within the Department of Communication and Media while also lending her talents to the St. Louis Media History Foundation.
As an assistant archives manager, Condon has helped the organization preserve and celebrate the city’s rich media history. Condon has worked with Kerry Manderbach, an adjunct professor of communication and media studies at UMSL and archivist with the foundation, to record interviews with local media figures, including radio disc jockeys and news anchors, about their experiences in the St. Louis media scene.
Their work has also included digitizing radio and TV broadcasts and cataloging physical media from vintage Anheuser-Busch advertisements to print editions of newspapers and magazines. It’s even led to discovering part of her own family legacy – media appearances by her grandfather, Ray Periandri.
“He was a well-known local musician who played the accordion, and I’ve gotten to see a lot of what he accomplished through my work,” Condon said. “I’ve even been able to hear recordings of him playing on the radio, so it’s been really special to come across these treasures while also doing something else that I’m passionate about.”
In the present day, Condon documents others’ special moments as owner of High Pointe Media. The live-event video production company specializes in recording performances for local dance studios.
“As a former dancer myself, I’m passionate about it because I understand how meaningful it is to have these memories to look back on,” she said. “You’re only on stage for a moment, and then all you have is the video. So, I find it incredibly rewarding knowing that the students and their families will have these videos for decades. It’s much more than just a job for me.”
Condon launched High Pointe Media, in part, due to an influential internship with COCA as an UMSL student, where she was mentored by David Hermann.
Now, Condon is preparing the next generation of media professionals at the university. As a technology resource associate, she has facilitated the operation of the equipment in the department’s TV studio, ensuring everything functions reliably for instructional use.
Aside from helping students learn to operate the equipment, Condon has worked with instructors to help develop and refine the framework for media courses, contributing to their long-term success. She has also regularly served as a teaching assistant for several media courses, putting in hours outside of the classroom to support UMSL students. She has regularly run after-class labs, providing students with hands-on guidance, individualized support and encouragement.
“One of the most rewarding parts of my job is seeing how students grow over the course of the semester,” Condon said. “Being able to support them with the technical aspects is rewarding. But what’s most meaningful to me is seeing them develop confidence and refine their skills.”
Manderbach commended this commitment in his nomination of Condon. He noted that many students have reached out to her over the years, reflecting the trust they place in her expertise, patience and commitment to their learning.
“Her dedication is further demonstrated by the many ways she goes above and beyond her formal responsibilities,” Manderbach wrote in his nomination. “Jennifer has come in on days off to prepare studio spaces and equipment, assisted instructors with grading and critiquing student work and consistently supported departmental events and programs. In addition, she has provided video production assistance to other departments across the university, helping meet their instructional and promotional needs with professionalism and care. Her sustained service, quiet leadership, and deep commitment to student and faculty success truly embody the spirit of the Hero Award.”
Meghann Humphries
Growing up in Jackson, Missouri, Humphries was always a “nature kid” and an animal lover. Humphries assumed the latter would eventually translate into a career as a veterinarian, but an introductory biology course at Southeast Missouri State University changed her mind. Well, that, and a very eye-opening internship.
“I just found ecology and evolution to be more interesting in general,” Humphries said. “I also shadowed a rural veterinarian who treated horses mostly and realized that is not the job for me. So, that intro bio class was huge.”
At SEMO, Professor John Scheibe became a mentor to Humphries as she completed her bachelor’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology and her master’s degree in wildlife biology. Humphries worked with Scheibe as an undergraduate on several research projects, which were instrumental to her development as a scientist. The experiences also confirmed her desire to pursue biology as a career.
“There was this captive sugar gliders diet study, where we wanted to identify a better diet for these captive sugar gliders,” she said. “It was so fun. He would also do these flight studies in this big aerial flight cage. That really introduced me to designing and conducting an experiment and following it through. From that point on, it was pretty much sealed.”
After graduating from SEMO, Humphries did field work in Missouri state parks. She enjoyed the work but didn’t get to pursue her own research questions, which motivated her to return to academia. In 2014, she joined UMSL’s doctoral program in ecology, evolution and behavior.
During her time in the program, Humphries had the opportunity to work with renowned scholars including the late Robert Ricklefs, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus; Patricia Parker, professor emerita and the former E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor in Zoological Studies and director of the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center; and Robert Marquis, professor emeritus. She began to see a place for herself in academia, and the experience inspired her to apply for an open faculty position at UMSL after earning her PhD in 2019.
“The biology department is just chock-full of wonderful people,” Humphries said. “We all genuinely respect and like each other. It’s a very collaborative place to be. That was part of it. Part of it was the Harris Center, which is such an amazing resource, and I really like being involved in that and wanted to stick with that.”
As associate teaching professor in the Department of Biology, Humphries teaches “Introductory Biology: Organisms and the Environment” as well as courses on conservation, ornithology and vertebrate anatomy. In 2024, her dedication to professional development as an educator and commitment to student engagement earned the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching to a Non-Tenure Track Faculty Member.
She creates a student-centered environment in the classroom by assuring her students they can be themselves and are where they belong. She also strives to give them the vocabulary to understand the intricacies of academic biology.
“I try to teach them that it is a foreign language,” Humphries said. “The concepts are one thing, which are for the most part intuitive, the language that we use to describe it is less intuitive. So, I teach them to start translating these words and really understand the meaning of the word. Once you’ve got that, you can speak the language.”
Associate Professor Bethany Zolman praised Humphries’ work in the classroom but also highlighted her ability to put lessons from her courses into practice through collaborations with local organizations such as the Bellerive Bird Sanctuary and the St. Louis Audubon Society.
“For the past several years, she has been developing a relationship with the Bellerive Bird Sanctuary that is adjacent to campus,” Zolman wrote in her nomination. “She hosted the Honeysuckle Hack there to help take care of the property. She had over 50 volunteers in 2024, in conjunction with the Honors College. What a great way to see her teaching come into action!”
