Founders Dinner video shares stories of how UMSL transforms the lives of its graduates

by Steve Walentik | Oct 8, 2018

LaQuisha McCann (above), now a nurse at SSM Health DePaul Hospital, is featured along with fellow alumni Lucy Feicht, Miranda Ming and Tom Minogue.

LaQuisha McCann, now a nurse at SSM Health DePaul Hospital, is featured in a video that debuted last week at the annual Founders Dinner. The video highlights many of the ways alumni have had their lives transformed by their experiences at UMSL.

The University of Missouri–St. Louis has made it its mission to transform the lives of students and has been doing so in myriad ways since its founding in 1963.

Attendees of this year’s Founders Dinner witnessed some of them in a new video that debuted last Thursday at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton, Missouri.

The six-minute video shared the stories of Lucy Feicht, LaQuisha McCann, Miranda Ming and Tom Minogue, each one coming from a different background and chasing different goals through their experience at UMSL.

Feicht, now the owner and broker of Lou Realty Group, had a clear vision of her future in real estate when she enrolled, and UMSL helped her get there.

“I fully utilized their advising program,” she said. “They got me on a very strict, straight-and-narrow course for what I wanted to obtain after college too.”

Ming was less certain where she wanted to end up after moving back home and transferring to UMSL after starting college in a small town in Alabama.

“I knew I wanted to be in the social services field, but I was still trying to figure it all out,” said Ming, who went on to earn four degrees from the College of Education and is now the associate principal at Jennings Senior High School.

McCann, like a lot of UMSL students, had to work her way through college.

“I never could go just straight through because there was so much going on,” McCann said. “I was still trying to take care of my home life and my family. I was still working full time.”

She received the Finish Your Degree Scholarship in her final semester to help her graduate and is now a nurse at SSM Health DePaul Hospital.

Minogue remembered being unsure about what he wanted to do with his life when he enrolled in college. His main interest was playing tennis.

He met his wife at UMSL, realized his interest in law and was ultimately admitted to Harvard Law School after graduation, setting him firmly on the path to where he is today, the chairman of Thompson Coburn LLP and past president of UMSL’s Chancellor’s Council.

“If I got to choose one more time where I would go to college – if I got to choose 100 times where I’d go to college – I’d do it again,” Minogue said. “I’d make the same choice I did 40 years ago.”