This month’s Hero Award recipients are (from left) Antionette Sterling, Travis Wente and Jenny Martin. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

University of Missouri–St. Louis Chancellor Kristin Sobolik and her cabinet continue to recognize the exemplary efforts of staff and faculty members from across campus by bestowing the UMSL Hero Award on up to three individuals each month.

This month’s honorees are Antionette Sterling, a senior academic advisor in the College of Business Administration; Travis Wente, senior grant writer in the Office of Research and Economic and Community Development; and Jenny Martin, the director of web and digital communications in University Marketing and Communications.

Antionette Sterling

Sterling was in Memphis earlier this month, getting set to present at a regional conference for NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising, when she opened her computer open to pull up her PowerPoint slides. That’s when she saw the email letting her know she’d been selected for an UMSL Hero Award.

“It was a really pleasant surprise,” said Sterling, who has spent nearly 19 years supporting students through advising or academic coaching at UMSL. “I’m very thankful.”

For the past three years, she has served as a senior academic advisor in the College of Business Administration, working primarily with students majoring in international business or management. She maintains a caseload of nearly 300 students each semester.

Sterling loves witnessing their growth and development.

“Sometimes students, they’ve had academic difficulties, they’ve had setbacks because of various reasons,” Sterling said. “They have to overcome challenges, and I’ve been able to see that development of the student who maybe, as a traditional undergraduate student, maybe they begin and something happens and they had to drop out, and then they returned as an adult student or now they have more of a focus. They’re more determined than ever, and they’re more involved on campus. Then they graduate, and they become leaders. It’s very rewarding to see that progress.”

Colleagues, including Terri Montgomery, have noticed her impact.

“She is compassionate and is a true servant to the students she advises in the College of Business,” said Montgomery, who has gotten to know Sterling through their involvement with the Black Faculty/Staff Association, for which Sterling currently serves as president.  “I see her as a promoter and encourager of people. She is a motivator and one of UMSL’s true champions.”

Sterling, who earned a bachelor’s degree in French, didn’t set out to get into academic advising. She said the career found her as she started applying for positions on campus at what was then Southwest Missouri State University after graduating with her master’s degree in communication.

She landed a job as a professional education advisor in the College of Education and quickly found it suited her. She wound up staying at Southwest Missouri State for a decade before moving to St. Louis.

Sterling came to UMSL in 2006 as a student development coordinator – a position that combined advising and academic coaching. She’s also held jobs as a student retention specialist and a success coach before moving into her current role.

In 2016, she earned her EdD in higher education administration from the College of Education, and she has been active in both NACADA and MACADA, the Missouri Academic Advising Association.

“I’ve felt as if my calling in life was to help people discover their calling,” Sterling said. “Advisors help students identify their calling and challenge students to get out of their comfort zone and to learn new things and not just settle for the status quo but look at different options – not just career. We encourage students to join organizations, to try new things, to go on study abroad trips.

“In encouraging and challenging students to step out of their comfort zones, we transform lives.”

Travis Wente

UMSL is driving initiatives to improve infrastructure and foster community and workforce development. All those efforts require funding, and as a senior grant writer in the Office of Research and Economic and Community Development, Wente plays a critical role helping ensure the university has the resources necessary to carry out its important work.

In one recent project, Wente helped draft an application for an Economic Development Administration grant to support the API Innovation Center’s research and development labs – a process that lasted more than a year.

“He is very open and thorough and so easy to work with,” said Janet Wilding, UMSL’s assistant vice chancellor for economic and community development, who nominated Wente for the Hero Award. “We went through so many edits, changes, budget changes, etc. He was patient, kind and persistent until we were able to submit at the end of September. For such a young colleague, I have been so impressed with Travis’ professionalism. He has a great career ahead of him.”

Wente didn’t know much of anything about grants or grant writing when he began pursuing his master’s degree in public administration and policy analysis at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2021. But he soon landed a graduate assistantship at the Monroe County Illinois Economic Development Corporation – a position that was grant-funded.

In his role, Wente found himself writing grant proposals for local governments, including in his hometown of Waterloo as well as Hecker and Monroe County. He also assisted small businesses with applying for grants and grant monitoring. It was eye-opening to realize the impact he could have.

“I always just want to find a way to assist and help people, and I’ve tried many different avenues to getting to that,” he said. “It seems like this one was the most natural progression – understanding how things work and then realizing how many people really do actually need grant assistance, and how far it really helped a lot of small businesses.”

Wente had another graduate assistantship at Edwardsville Township before returning to Monroe County as a community development coordinator while he finished his degree.

A couple months after graduating in December 2022, Wente saw a job posting for what he called “a very obscure, specific job at UMSL and happened to be a good fit for it.” He started in his role in March 2023.

The job has him meeting regularly with members of the economic and community development team and then investigating grant opportunities that could support their initiatives, whether from local, state or federal sources or from private foundations. It takes careful attention to understand the mission of an organization and how work being done at UMSL can align with their goals.

“I find myself out of depth on certain topics, but it is very enriching because members of my team are such experts in what they do,” he said. “Learning what they do, how they do it, is very enlightening, and it allows me to kind of transfer those skills into my own profession, too.

“Working with like outside organizations like APIIC as well, I’ve learned so much about API and chemistry, and that was never my forte. It’s a breath of fresh air. It’s kind of nice because you never know what the day is going to give you.”

Jenny Martin

Even members of the UMSL community who’ve never met Martin regularly witness her impact. It’s there every time they visit the university’s website.

From the video that now greets anyone who lands on the UMSL homepage to the clean headers and footers and global navigation, Martin and the web and digital communications team she leads – and helped build – have made significant upgrades and created a more inviting, uniform and user-friendly site.

“We are nowhere close to where it was in 2020 when I picked things up,” said Martin, who took on her position that summer. “Being able to have a concentrated team to do the work that needs to be done and having the freedom to do so has been great. Our campus community has been hugely receptive and helpful and thankful. They work well with my team, which I really appreciate.”

She and her team have brought fresh ideas to help modernize the UMSL’s digital footprint, but they have been careful to make sure they align with the needs of units and departments throughout the campus.

“Jenny has quickly become a go-to individual across the university who brings her web and digital expertise to the table to enhance our collective efforts,” said Justin Roberts, UMSL’s vice chancellor for marketing and communications, who nominated Martin for the Hero Award.

Martin has spent nearly 20 years working in the digital space, though her training began even earlier as she found herself captivated by the early days of the internet and coding.

“It is a skill set that I developed outside of work, that shifted into work because I knew how to do it,” Martin said.

Martin had majored in music with a minor in computer science at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Missouri. Her first job after graduation was as a development assistant at Drury University, and she returned to her alma mater about a year later to work in alumni relations. But in 2007, CMU needed someone to design and manage its website, and Martin agreed to shift into the newly created role.

“I did some layout and design work and helped with communication stuff part of the time, but the website was also my responsibility,” Martin said. “When social media became mainstream in 2007, I picked that up too. If it was online, I touched it.”

She knew right away she’d found where she belonged.

Martin remained at Central Methodist until 2018, when she moved to St. Louis. She spent two years working in marketing and digital sourcing at Osborne HomeCare Group but was eager to find her way back into higher education when the job at UMSL presented itself in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

She’s felt at ease in the university community and currently serves as the vice chair of the UMSL Staff Association Council.

She also has recently been tasked with chairing UMSL’s Digital Accessibility Task Force, charged with ensuring the university is in compliance with digital accessibility requirements outlined in a Final Rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by the established deadline in 2026.