ECC Alumnus Alex Fees Will be Commencement Speaker
East Central College graduate, news correspondent and Today in St. Louis multi-skilled journalist Alex Fees will address the Class of 2023 at the Saturday, May 13, commencement ceremony.
Fees, who originally is from Union, attended ECC from 1982-84, graduating with an associate of arts degree in journalism. Prior to that, he graduated from Union High School in 1982.
“I am honored to be asked to be the commencement speaker at East Central College,” he said. “My careers in television news and communications all started at ECC so many years ago — I feel like I am coming full circle.”
The commencement ceremony will be inside the ECC gym in the Donald D. Shook Student Center on the Union campus at 11:30 a.m.
Fees was the editor of The Cornerstone student newspaper at ECC, and he was elected to the student senate, serving as president. He added that his brother, Syd, also served as student senate president at ECC nine years before he did.
Fees noted that he will talk with students about his life before and after attending ECC, including his transfer to Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) in Cape Girardeau.
Fees’ Background
At SEMO, Fees was the editor of the university newspaper, the Capaha Arrow, now called the Arrow, and he was an intern at KTVO, Kirksville, which led him to a career in television.
Fees worked at TV news stations in Iowa and Nebraska before returning to the St. Louis area in 1998, when he became a freelance journalist for 5 on Your Side at KSDK, St. Louis, and several other networks and shows.
“During that time, I also freelanced as a field producer, periodically, for ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, the Rachael Ray Show, Inside Edition, and the Food Network, among others,” he said.
Fees then went to work as a communications specialist in the Mehlville School District and then as the executive communications director for the Rockwood School District.
In 2020, Fees returned to 5 On Your Side and in March 2022, he accepted a full-time role as a multi-skilled journalist on the Today in St. Louis program.
Fees and his wife, Rachel, live in Brentwood with their sons Jacob, 13, and Daniel, 11.
“We also share a home with an 85-pound lab, collie and St. Bernard named Allie, who is your best friend; and a cat named Autumn. . . who is not,” he said.
