Ryan Manley, who served in the Army National Guard, spent his time at UMSL working with the Veterans Center on campus and serving as president of Triton Vets. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

From time to time, as Ryan Manley marched through his educational journey at the University of Missouri–St. Louis with a verve and passion for school that hadn’t existed when he was a Tri-Valley High School student almost two decades earlier, he would pull out his old transcript.

The number he was looking for never changed – 1.90 – but was always a source of inspiration.

That was his GPA back when he was a teenager who had a part-time job and, admittedly, would rather hang with his friends than spend any extra time studying. That kid did not have the same motivation that this adult does, motivation derived from lessons learned from both successes and character-building challenges throughout his life’s journey.

“I would look at it and think, ‘I can be better than that,’” Manley said. “I find it motivating to look back and think, ‘Let’s be better than that guy. Be the best you can and see where you can get.’”

Manley, now 44, just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in information systems and technology, with a minor in supply chain management. His GPA this time around? A stellar 3.85.

“I’m not necessarily trying to get 100% in every class,” he said. “I’m just trying to give it my all. If I feel like I’m slacking off but I still have 100%, I’m going to keep driving forward. But if I feel like I’m giving it my all, and I get an 82% in a class and I gave it everything, I know I had nothing left on the table.”

The moment he completed his capstone class, Information Systems Design 4850 with Professor of Information Systems Joe Rottman, Manley dove headfirst into the job hunt with the same approach he took to the rest of his UMSL career.

It’s easy to trace the genesis of his academic transformation. Manley signed up for the Army National Guard while he was still in high school; the date, Dec. 22, 1998, is seared into his memory. He got to travel a bit, with training exercises in places like Iceland and the Mojave Desert in Southern California. When he was almost three years in, the 9/11 attacks happened. Manley and his unit had their bags packed even before they received their orders.

After three deployments and seven years – he was stationed at a power plant in Illinois on state-active duty, then in Germany for a year and then in Louisiana – Manley was a different person. Transitioning back into civilian life after each deployment was a challenge. He had grown up riding in a BMW motorcycle sidecar with both his mom and dad, and motorcycles have always been not only a passion, but a way to reset and find a bit of normalcy and familiarity.

For example, on one four-day weekend while he was serving in Louisiana – for the better part of two years, he was at Fort Polk (now known as Fort Johnson) as part of a unit training soldiers headed to the Middle East in anti-terrorism tactics – he tackled an Iron Butt challenge, which is riding 1,000 miles on a motorcycle as quickly as possible. He drove from Fort Polk to his parent’s home in Central Illinois, met up with his dad and together they rode to and from Champaign to reach his mileage goal in 18 hours.

Not long after his time in the National Guard ended, Manley met his wife, Mandy, and moved to St. Louis. When he found a job with Gateway BMW Motorcycles, the fit was natural. He started as a technician, moved up to foreman and spent more than seven years as the service manager. Toward the end of that stretch, he started contemplating his next move, looking at business schools not only in St. Louis, but in other areas, too.

Manley admits he was a bit surprised to learn about the stellar reputation UMSL’s College of Business Administration has in the industry. The more he researched his options, the more he realized his best choice was pretty obvious.

“It’s not just because the school is two miles away from my house that I really wanted to go there,” he said. “They have the program that I actually wanted to do. It just happens to be two miles, which is not a bad thing.”

That Tri-Valley High School GPA proved to be a hurdle, though, so Manley earned his associate of arts with a business administration emphasis at St. Louis Community College and reapplied to – and was accepted at – UMSL for the spring 2022 semester. He knew he wanted to choose a major in the College of Business Administration but was torn between areas with high job growth, such as information systems, cybersecurity and supply chain management. In the end, he went with information systems and technology as his major, with supply chain as his minor.

Manley said the lessons learned during his military service translate to academia.

“When it’s go time you have a mission to accomplish,” he said. “It’s go time, mission first. It can be very useful when you have a paper, when you have stuff to do. It’s not very useful when you have a wife who reminds you, ‘Hey, you have 104% in the class. Can you just relax a little?’ So you have to kind of balance that. For me, that’s been a challenge at times.”

Manley was determined to get the most out of every class at UMSL, and that meant not just doing the reading assignments, turning in homework and passing the tests. He quickly realized the secret to making the most of his UMSL educational experience.

“The professors at this school are so good,” he said. “It is very, very impressive how open and willing they are to talk to students if you ask them questions via email, questions in person or in class. I’ve met several professors after class, grabbed a cup of coffee at the MSC and just talked about the class, and a lot of times just their story, where they see this field or that field going. That’s a huge resource that I just don’t think a lot of people are using. And it’s something that they could.”

The professors, in turn, definitely noticed his efforts.

“Ryan really stands out because of his curiosity and drive to truly understand the course material on a deeper level,” said Assistant Professor Trilce Encarnacion, who taught the first supply chain course Manley took at UMSL. “He brings a level of professionalism that sets him apart. I’ve had him in two courses now, and he’s consistently shown up to office hours, always looking to go beyond what’s covered in class.”

For Manley, the UMSL experience wasn’t just about getting a degree. Mandy told him before he started that he needed to find some sort of home on campus, whether that was a club or even something as simple as his own comfortable chair in a corner of the library. At his orientation meeting, Manley met Joshua Evans, who was the Veterans Center coordinator at the time. Evans told him there would always be coffee and a place to sit, and it wasn’t long until that became home.

Evans also noticed Manley’s limp, the result of a broken foot during his Louisiana deployment that wasn’t properly diagnosed, and connected him with the right people at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. That led to a disability rating, which opened up VA funds to help pay for school. Manley knew he wanted to help other vets at UMSL, too. Along with Irina Biedenstein, he helped restart Triton Vets, a group for veterans and military-connected students that had been shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I felt it was important to share whatever I know, do anything I can to help a veteran with mental issues, disability issues, just be a friend,” he said. “It’s OK to have money troubles. Let’s talk about budgeting. It’s okay to have mental issues. I can help you out as best I can. I can also tell you that there’s no shame in going to a counselor. We’ve all been through some stuff.”

Manley, who was chosen to represent UMSL at the Student Veterans of America Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C., in October, has been both president and vice president of Triton Vets and has worked to mentor the next group of leaders for the group.

“Being a resource for other veterans on campus has been important to me because somebody reached out and helped me with some of the issues that I was having,” he said. “I just wanted to give back.”

And that’s exactly what he’s done, with an excellent GPA to boot.