Meetings over meals is a big way Michael V. Smith builds a welcoming atmosphere with his Des Lee internship program. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)
Entering his 10th year at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, lifelong music educator Michael V. Smith has learned many truths about mentorship and preparing his students for their transition into a career in music.
Up near the top of the list is a simple truth: Food works wonders.
“I have discovered that one of the most important mentorship tools is food,” Smith says with a laugh. “I like to say people break open their lives when you break bread together. It’s just amazing how it creates this wonderful opportunity to open up.”
Smith is the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Music Education at UMSL and director of the E. Desmond Lee Fine Arts Education Collaborative, a collection of 25 local arts agencies and 15 local school districts dedicated to enhancing fine arts in the St. Louis region.
Smith regularly gathers past and present Des Lee interns – a group of music and music education students who complete an internship with a local fine arts organization through the program – for meals at restaurants around the community. What college student could resist free food? That’s far from the only draw, though.
“We discuss what our jobs look like, how we’re feeling, how Des Lee can better support partnerships around St. Louis schools,” says Alex Wurl, a December 2024 graduate who landed a full-time job with The St. Louis Children’s Choir through his Des Lee internship. “You add food and everybody’s a lot happier. Seeing my fellow collaborative members and talking with them helps with understanding how big St. Louis is. There are so many minute opportunities in music that you otherwise wouldn’t see, so being able to discuss what other people are going through, what these other interns are experiencing, it’s just incredible.”
Smith personally assesses each internship application and selects students who bring a variety of viewpoints to the program – and the table – whether it’s their focus at school, their career goals or their unique background. The palate of perspectives is refreshing and, for many students, eye-opening. Smith also uses the meetings to further the students’ professional development, talking about topics such as résumé-building, letters of introduction and things of that nature.
Wurl, Allison Schweitzer, Rita Schien and Parker Miller were part of last year’s intern group. This year’s group includes students Cory Simmons, G Schmiedeke and Ryan Scott.
The bonds built – and lessons learned – over these meals are helping UMSL’s music program make an impact in the St. Louis area and beyond. Current and former Des Lee interns have landed internships and full-time positions at local arts agencies, including Jazz St. Louis, The Sheldon Concert Hall, the Bach Society of St. Louis, St. Louis Classical Guitar and The St. Louis Children’s Choir, to name a few.
Service with intention
Smith had long considered himself a bit of an academic nomad. He’s taught music education, marching band, choir and orchestra in Kansas, Illinois and Washington, D.C. One of the reasons Smith chose to join the UMSL faculty in 2016 was the opportunity to commit himself to serving his students – long a passion of his – with the full support of his university. The Des Lee Collaborative was originally founded in alignment with the vision of philanthropist E. Desmond Lee, who was devoted to helping the St. Louis community.
“I’d never had the opportunity to flourish with service,” he says. “This was like a call to me, not just to come back to the Midwest, but come to the roots and the core of what I want to do, which is be of service and change the world through music.”
Smith organizes regular meetings for members of the collaborative – food is provided, of course – to create networking opportunities while discussing needs and developments within the music community in St. Louis.
Everything Smith does, and everything he teaches, is done with intention. He’s purposeful in creating an atmosphere of encouragement and excellence by providing structure and offering guidance to students. He’s also intentional with the collaborative, building connections throughout the community that will benefit current and future students while giving local schools and arts agencies the support they need.
“These sorts of opportunities are not just magical,” he says. “They don’t just happen. You need to be intentional. The myth of mentoring is that it just happens, right? No, you need to be intentional about it and set up guidelines and structures that will help this happen.”
Smith, especially, is intentional in teaching his students to be intentional.
Des Lee intern Ryan Scott does his student teaching at Seckman Middle School.
“That is definitely a big thing he talks about,” says Scott, a senior music education major finishing up his final semester as a student teacher at Seckman Middle School this spring. “It’s so important for us as educators to be intentional with what we’re doing, both in intentionally bringing people together and intentionally spreading some of what we do with everybody else.”
Smith lives out his mission of service every day in his work with students.
“I had him for one class and after that, he was like, ‘I want to help you with the rest of your life,’” says Schweitzer, a spring 2024 graduate who works with Wurl at The St. Louis Children’s Choir. “And I thought, ‘You’re awesome for doing that!’”
Every Des Lee intern has a similar story.
“Dr. Smith was really a mentor for me throughout college,” says Rachel Morgan, an accomplished
classical pianist and 2019 graduate who lives in Nashville and is the director of operations for Open Studio. “If I ever needed anything, he was there. That’s really important to have. College is such a weird place. You start when you’re 18. You think you’re an adult, but you’re really trying to just figure out where you’re going, like a little leaf in the wind. Having a mentor like him was really great.”
Smith has centered the Des Lee program around UMSL’s Department of Music, which is full of professors who, like Smith, put their students first. For Morgan, Alla Voskoboynikova, the director of keyboard studies, was influential. For Schweitzer, it was Jim Henry, the director of choral studies. For Wurl, it was Andy Goodman, the coordinator of music education.
“It’s just incredible how much effort Dr. Goodman puts into ensuring that we find jobs and that we find places where we can survive student teaching,” Wurl says. “He has provided indispensable feedback about what we should be looking for, what questions we should ask, what red flags we should look out for. And it’s not just that he wants to get me a job; it’s that he wants me to be supported and to be successful after I get that job.”
Spreading their musical wings
With Smith’s influence, Morgan used her time at UMSL to build the connections that launched her career in the music industry before she even graduated. Smith helped her land an internship at The Sheldon Concert Hall, and she also met Brian Owens, an accomplished American Soul singer and UMSL alum who joined the Fine Arts Collaborative as a community music artist in residence in 2017. Morgan started working with Owens as his assistant.
“I got a lot of wonderful experience working with him, even doing events at UMSL,” Morgan says. “One of the most stressful days of my life was a fundraiser concert with Michael McDonald at the Touhill Center. We sold out the show, and I got to interact with McDonald’s management team, got to handle logistics, assistant stuff, operations, marketing and all the behind-the-scenes things that artists need. I got that experience during college, and that was super pivotal for my career.”
Through Owens, Morgan met jazz pianist Peter Martin, who had started his own company, Open Studio, which provides jazz lessons online. She helped out with Open Studio’s social media as she finished her final year at UMSL and started with the company full-time just a few days after commencement. Now, she’s the director of operations and member experience and is involved with nearly every aspect of the company.
“One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to talk to the artists, the jazz musicians, to do workshops with Open Studio or to record an entire course, growing that vault of the library of courses we have,” Morgan says. “I manage our weekly mentor session program, where we have a different artist teach a live workshop every Friday for all of our members.”
As the company has grown, adding world-renowned jazz musicians to its roster of instructors and musicians, so has Open Studio’s social platforms. With buy-in from Martin and others at the company, Morgan has helped Open Studio grow from roughly 1,000 Instagram followers when she started to more than 225,000, and from roughly 5,000 YouTube subscribers to more than 550,000.
One of Morgan’s friends and classmates, Maria A. Ellis, is another Des Lee success story. Ellis, who calls Smith “a champion for the students,” has built a reputation as one of the finest gospel choir directors in the nation with her business, Girl Conductor.
“I met her my first year here, and I thought, ‘Oh, my, she is a rock star,’” Smith says. “I set her up again with The St. Louis Children’s Choir with an internship and that lasted only about a month because they hired her full-time. She’s skyrocketed. She continues to work at The Sheldon. She’s parlayed her talent into a career. She travels the country doing honor choirs all over the place.”
Scott has had two internship experiences, with the National Blues Museum and with St. Louis Classical Guitar’s Guitar Horizons program.
“(Smith) said, ‘You play guitar. How would you like to be able to teach more people to play guitar?’” Scott says. “I said, ‘Well, that’s what I do, so I would love to do that more.’ He gave me opportunities to teach that I otherwise would not have had.”
With the internships at two different organizations, Scott has had the opportunity to see the scope of the reputation of the Des Lee program. “The Des Lee Fine Arts Collaborative is a great asset to the fine arts community in St. Louis,” Scott says. “It not only incorporates music groups, but theater groups and other arts groups and brings them together.”
Schweitzer and Wurl work together at SLCC; Wurl is the production manager, and Schweitzer is the program manager and also helps with classes.
“I get to help teach a musicianship class with our artistic director,” Schweitzer says. “For those three hours, we’re really just trying to make music fun for them, letting them do different activities, different games and letting them be creative as well within their own music writing. By the end of our last session, the kids literally get to write their own piece of music using the instruments and all the skills that they’ve learned. It’s really cool to see them grow from Day 1 to Day 5.”
As with most students from UMSL who join SLCC, Wurl and Schweitzer got their starts as ensemble assistants but quickly took on larger roles with the choir.
“Working every day with juniors and seniors at UMSL and graduates of the program, it is awesome,” says Ben Nordstrom, SLCC’s executive director. “The relationship with UMSL and the pipeline of quality talent that comes our way from Des Lee and the music department is amazing. It’s just such a valuable resource for us. Alex and Allison have both instantly become part of the family here, and I think that only happens because they come every day with authenticity and passion for music and music education.”
It isn’t a coincidence all of the UMSL students Nordstrom works with have those same qualities.
“UMSL’s music program might be small, but I don’t think the value of an education is based on the size of the department,” Wurl says. “I would not trade out any of my teachers. I have loved all of the professors I’ve worked with, and I think having a small discipline allows us to have this group of very dedicated interns.”
Wurl pauses.
“And we have an opportunity to have dinner together,” he says. “It’s not just ‘Go sit in this room
and let’s talk business, and we’re all going to wear suits.’ That’s just not how it is here.”
This story was originally published in the spring 2025 issue of UMSL Magazine. If you have a story idea for UMSL Magazine, email magazine@umsl.edu.
