Thirteen years after graduating as a student, Joe Shaver ’11 has returned to St. Louis U. High as Director of Advancement Services.

Shaver began in this newly-added third-floor role back in April, after Vice President of Advancement Sean Agniel and Senior Director of Community Engagement John Penilla reached out to him with the job offer. Last week’s edition of the Prep News highlighted four faculty who had entered new roles within the Advancement Team; in actuality, Shaver makes this a “fantastic five” new members.

While a student at SLUH, Shaver was involved in the choir program and Eating Club, and delved successfully into SLUH’s computer science curriculum. He studied finance at Truman State afterwards, and then continued to work at Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity (of which he had been a member at Truman State) in Oxford, Ohio, but found himself too much of a “St. Louis guy” to be away for so long. He took up a role at the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he stayed until this spring when Agniel came knocking. 

The work he did both at Delta Sigma Pi and the Archdiocese of St. Louis piggybacked well off of his computer science background, which he had expanded upon with courses at Truman State: at both institutions, he served as an internet technology head of sorts. At the Archdiocese, he aided in the implementation and running of Raiser’s Edge, a fundraising software, in the diocese’s various schools.

“His background in IT complements his professional experience in database management, and his experience as an alumnus grounds him in a love and commitment for our mission,” said Agniel.

Luckily, Shaver’s transition to Director of Advancement Services at SLUH was very smooth: he continued working in data management, just as he had in his previous jobs. 

“‘Fundraising IT’ is maybe the simplest way to describe the role … it’s really just advancement systems,” said Shaver. “This was the first job post-college that I haven’t had to learn a new place because I went here for high school, or a new skill set, because I’ve already done this work elsewhere, so that’s been nice.”

The job opening initially came as a result of department organization—Agniel and the team saw the role as a prime spot for someone who can handle all things data.

“The Director of Advancement Services sits at the hub of this data-savvy approach to partnering with 15,000 alumni and tens of thousands of donors and friends for the good of SLUH,” said Agniel.

When he first started in April, Shaver reported to Penilla and worked within community engagement, but now works under Agniel to serve as a more overarching manager of advancement systems. 

“We figured out that my role, which is a new role to the department, fits better with supporting the whole department,” said Shaver.

Shaver’s day-to-day stretches between departments and fundraising sectors: he aids with audit information in the business department, gathers and analyzes financial aid data with math teacher Craig Hannick, works with Director of Human Resources Beth Voegtli on updating faculty and staff databases, and much more. He is also working to implement Raiser’s Edge as the faculty and staff data management system.

“Data is my main thing, but that plays in everything,” said Shaver. “I help with events, because I pull out information on who’s invited to things and what list to pull for name tags for events.”

His primary project over the past few months is coming to a close: SLUH’s Gratitude Report, an annual summary of SLUH’s accomplishments and its fundraising successes over the year. 

His implementation into the community has worked very well so far—and Agniel has high hopes for how he will continue to streamline data operations.

“Mr. Shaver has made an immediate impact since joining our team last spring. He is constantly finding new and more efficient ways for running the business of SLUH. He is affable and kind and eager to be helpful, which makes him a very willing collaborator across departments,” said Agniel. “With Mr. Shaver, I feel confident that we are prepared to meet the challenges and to set the standard for a sophisticated approach to data management in secondary education in the United States.”

Overall, Shaver has been happy to be back in the SLUH community.

“Fr. Stewart says all the time that when one person leaves, that makes the entire school a different place. You can see that for sure: different leadership, different students, different rooms in the building. That’s all changed a little bit. But at its base, it’s the same,” said Shaver. “The old cafeteria is now offices, my gym is now the cafeteria, so there’s some of these big changes that have happened, but the school itself, we’re still doing the same work that we did 13 years ago. Half of my teachers are still here … it’s so cool to be back and see the campus thriving and growing, and especially seeing it from an advancement perspective. Having that insider scoop that I didn’t have when I was a student is just that much cooler.”