This month’s Hero Award recipients are (from left) Helena Marvin, Lori Curtis and Daniel Gerth. (Photos by Derik Holtmann and August Jennewein)

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 Helena Marvin, an institutional repository, open educational resources and reference librarian for University Libraries; Lori Curtis, a teaching professor, BSW director and advising and outreach coordinator in the School of Social Work; and Daniel Gerth, a teaching professor and director of student services and alumni relations in the Pierre Laclede Honors College.

Helena Marvin

No day is exactly the same for Marvin at Universities Libraries. She might go from helping a scholar find materials for a research project to creating a free, open-access textbook for students to posting a faculty member’s academic article online.

Judy Schmitt, Marvin’s colleague, summed it up succinctly in her award nomination, “As is true with most librarians, Helena wears multiple hats.” Schmitt added that she wears them well.

“She often goes above and beyond her duties to help students with their research needs,” Schmitt wrote in her nomination. “For instance, she has met more than a dozen times with a student who faces challenges related to learning and using technology. Her belief in this student’s potential never wavers. Helena also understands the financial barriers that many students face when pursuing higher education. As an open educational resources (OER) librarian, she champions the use of open-access materials and openly licensed resources, striving to eliminate the burden of costly textbooks and materials. Her dedication goes beyond mere advocacy. She actively contributes to the creation and dissemination of OERs, sharing her expertise and insights with educators at UMSL and throughout the country.”

When Marvin left Lawrence, Kansas, to attend college in New York, she hadn’t intended to become a librarian. However, she graduated from the City College of New York with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 2008 at the height of the Great Recession.

“I looked around and I said, ‘No, I will return to the ivory tower,’ and I ran to library school,” she said with a laugh. “My father worked at the University of Kansas Library for 40 years.”

She went on to earn a master’s degree in information library science from Queens College, which provided the flexibility to either go into libraries or potentially work for a tech start-up. Ultimately, she chose the former.

After serving as a government documents serials librarian at CCNY for several years, Marvin says she made her way back to the Midwest for a very practical reason.

“I wanted to own housing,” she said. “And the UMSL institutional repository librarian position popped up, and it was the marriage of libraries and digital realities and getting to stretch my tech skills even more, which was great.”

In that position, Marvin not only makes UMSL faculty members’ academic papers freely available to the public when she’s legally able, but she also creates faculty profiles to showcase their work. As a reference librarian, she helps everyone on campus find what they need. That might be an undergraduate student looking for a peer-reviewed article or a faculty member in search of an obscure text.

“As an open educational resources librarian, I help faculty create open and free textbooks for our students and then share them with the world, so other institutions can use those materials for their students and broaden UMSL’s impact on the world,” she said.

Marvin enjoys getting to switch between those duties and thinks of them as in service to each other. For her, being able to explore so many ideas from members of the UMSL community is the best part of the job.

“I get ideas from the students; I get ideas from the faculty; I get ideas from different research areas,” she said. “But I don’t have to linger in any of them, so I never get bored.”

Lori Curtis

Curtis believes she was destined to work at UMSL.

“I think this was one of those jobs that was just supposed to happen,” she said.

Curtis earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the State University of New York at Geneseo and later obtained her master’s degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis. After working in the field for a few years, she interviewed at UMSL for a position as director of field education in 1999. At the time, the social work program was expanding and launching its new MSW program.

Unfortunately, Curtis received a letter notifying her that an internal candidate had been hired for the position. While it wasn’t the outcome she wanted, Curtis was still grateful to have been in the running.

“I did the thing that we always tell people that they should do, but a lot of times, we don’t really do it,” she said. “I sent handwritten notes to all the people that had been on the interview committee to thank them for the opportunity and wish them the best of luck with the new MSW program. I also said, ‘If there’s ever another position open that I might be qualified for, I would be happy to talk with you again.’”

Six weeks later, she got a call about an open position.

“I had always wanted to teach, but I thought I would never, unless I decided to go back for my PhD,” Curtis said. “I just didn’t know that there were opportunities with a master’s degree to be able to teach full-time at the university level. So, they said, ‘Would you be interested in this full-time teaching job?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like my dream job.’”

Curtis took that dream job in 1999, and over the next 25 years, she has steadily added more responsibilities to her plate and broadened her impact on the social work program and beyond. She started teaching four undergraduate courses a semester and gradually began to take over some of the undergraduate academic advising duties for social work. Now, in addition to teaching, she is the School of Social Work’s advising coordinator and outreach coordinator as well as the BSW director.

Senior Academic Advisor Sue Bateman and Student Success and Retention Coordinator Karen Allman have served with Curtis on several university advisory committees and task forces, and they nominated her for the accolade. They noted her knack for degree logistics and scheduling and her in-depth committee work.

But most of all, Curtis is a champion for UMSL students.

“With students, Lori is caring and supportive and always gives priority to student needs,” the pair wrote in their joint nomination. “She knows her students well and understands their unique needs.”

“Working with students is my favorite, whether that is advising or in the classroom,” Curtis said. “Being able to hear their stories and support them and be able to launch them into the professional social work realm, it’s just so incredibly rewarding.”

That rewarding work has made the time fly by.

“I love my job,” Curtis said. “I mean, I don’t know where 25 years has gone. I just never would have imagined being in one job for this long, but I love it. Over time, I’ve been able to grow into different kinds of things, not just doing the same thing all the time, so it continues to make it interesting and fun. And working with students is never the same day twice.”

Daniel Gerth

Daniel Gerth was thrilled to learn that both Audri Adams, a senior academic advisor in the Pierre Laclede Honors College, and Edward Munn Sanchez, the dean of the Honors College, nominated him for an UMSL Hero Award.

“I am especially touched that the two people who nominated me are, one, my supervisor and, two, my direct report,” he said. “So, it was interesting and cool that they both did it, and that they did it, apparently, independently of each other, without it being a conspiracy.”

In his nomination, Munn touched on Gerth’s gregarious nature and the culture he has helped build in the Honors College.

“Dan’s sense of fun is very much part of who he is, but it is really important to say that it is also intentional,” Munn wrote. “Dan understands how important fun is to building a positive community and to creating confidence in students so that both they can succeed and that they can come to us when there are issues. Dan is authentically fun and funny, but he is also very intentional in using this part of his personality to further the development of the honors community. And in doing so, Dan goes far beyond what is required.”

Adams highlighted Gerth’s dedication to the university.

“I have never seen another employee more committed to UMSL – both to our institution as a whole and to our students, staff, faculty and alumni,” she wrote in her nomination. “He works tirelessly both inside and outside of the classroom to create an environment that is welcoming for all. He is also always quick to lend a hand to anyone in need of assistance to ensure the Honors College’s students and employees are supported and feel valued.”

Gerth has background in literature and film composition, having earned a bachelor’s degree in English and history from Saint Louis University and a master’s degree in English from the University of Missouri–Columbia. He taught at several other regional universities before coming to UMSL in 2005 as a part-time instructor. The next year, he began teaching full-time in the Honors College, including a mixture of composition courses, freshman symposium courses, the first-year experience course and literature and film electives. He also advised all the STEM majors in the Honors College.

In the past, Gerth served as assistant dean, associate dean and interim dean of the Honors College, before moving into his role of director of student services. In addition to that administrative work, Gerth also serves as the advisor for Provenance, the college’s alumni magazine, and Brain Stew, a student-run satirical magazine.

“What I really like is the kids’ sense of humor and their desire to and ability to take things that are on their surface serious, but turn them into, I think, pretty playful satire,” he said. “I have always enjoyed things like that, and I think it gives them a fun outlet. It also, I think, humanizes faculty and staff when you see kids making up quotes from them and teasing them and turning them into cartoon characters in a publication. That’s a neat part of the community.”

Gerth enjoys seeing that creativity in the classroom in the Honors College, as well.

“The how and why I got into this in the first place is the experience of being in this small classroom with somewhere in the ballpark of 12 to 18 students, and just being with them and talking with them,” he said. “I really, really like them. I like the seminar format, where it is a lot of ideas bouncing around and people sharing thoughts and insights. I like being part of them learning things for the very first time.”

He added that he’s honored to be an UMSL Hero with his fellow awardees.

“I am so thrilled to be getting this award with two of my favorite people on campus, Lena and Lori.”