Meet First Lady Kathy Feser
When Dr. Edward Feser decided to accept the presidency of Saint Louis University, it was a mutual decision, made in collaboration with his wife of 35 years, Kathy Feser. After all, it meant a new role for Kathy, too.
Before she became SLU’s first lady, Kathy Feser had many careers, including civil engineer, stay-at-home mom, elementary school teacher and most recently, school district sustainability coordinator in Corvallis, Oregon.
Born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in Atlanta, Kathy attended Rice University. During her college study-abroad experience in Vienna, she met Ed on a spring break trip to Poland.
After college, she found civil engineering work in water resources and air quality and worked for an EPA contractor. Then she was a full-time mom for 10 years.
“As our kids got older, it was time to think about what's next,” she said. “Ed was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so I decided to go back to school for a master's and teaching certificate in elementary education. I started teaching fourth and fifth grades and then worked my way into a hands-on science position, teaching lab-based science to every grade. That took me back to my civil engineering and math and science roots.”
When she and Ed moved to Oregon in 2017, she took a position running special projects for the local school district, eventually becoming the sustainability coordinator.
And though she’s only been in St. Louis since June 2025, she has planted trees in Forest Park, helped clean the Meramec River with Operation Clean Stream, and spent a couple of days volunteering with the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis.
She and Ed also have received numerous invitations to take in St. Louis landmarks. “People have been so generous and welcoming,” she said. In just a few months, they’ve been to Cardinal baseball and City SC soccer games. They’ve seen shows at the Muny, Shakespeare in the Park and Jazz St. Louis, and took in the Garden Glow at the Missouri Botanical Garden. They’ve also enjoyed tours of the Missouri History Museum, Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Saint Louis University Museum of Art, among others.
Kathy is thankful for all the invitations to get to know the region. “We try not to say no,” she said, “because every event gives you another opportunity to get to know people and offers a little glimpse into the city.”
St. Louis is a big departure from Oregon. “Corvallis is a sweet college town embedded in the Willamette Valley, an hour from the beach and an hour-and-a-half from the mountains,” she said. “It’s beautiful, but it’s very small, and cultural and other activities are limited. We’re really enjoying the diversity of people, neighborhoods, restaurants and arts in St. Louis.”
She recalled an event that dramatized the differences: “I was doing the free yoga at the Saint Louis Art Museum in September, and before I went, I thought it might just be a few women like me. But there were 60 people, and the group was diverse in age, race and gender. It was wonderful. And that said to me, that's what St. Louis is giving to us.”
This story was published in the spring 2026 issue of Universitas.
About Universitas
Universitas, the award-winning alumni magazine of Saint Louis University, is distributed to alumni, parents and benefactors of the University. The magazine includes campus news, feature stories, alumni profiles and class notes, and has a circulation of 103,000.