Mike Nolan

A Profile Story on Mike Nolan

Mike Nolan wakes up around seven in the morning to start the day pitching story ideas about UAlbany. His stories focus on research from professors in atmospheric science, emergency preparedness, weather, and climate. Mike Nolan is the Associate Director of Communications for Media Relations at UAlbany. He started working for the university back in 2014 and enjoys being able to work with his colleagues on communicating UAlbany's mission.

He is an alum at UAlbany and graduated back in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and business. He knew before he entered college that he wanted to write about sports and thought about sports journalism as a potential career. When he was a student here, he did an internship with the Times Union. But he knew from that point, being a sports reporter might not be his career path.  “I felt like it might not be the right career path for me, mostly just because they work long hours, and it seems stressful," he said. "It seemed like something that maybe I wasn't going to be happy doing. So sports became more of a hobby for me and I started to look into other places.”

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Photo Credit: Mike Nolan

(Nolan helping students prepare for an interview) 

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It all changed for him when he took a class in public relations his junior year with Ron Kermani. He really enjoyed this course and was inspired to start looking for internships in public relations. He decided to do an internship in Saratoga called Firecracker4 Road Race. That's where he wrote a couple of pieces about the road races, and assisted with creating content for their social media channels. He realized from there that pr was really interesting to him. He liked the idea of being able to promote for an organization that he truly cares about. 

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But he wasn't sure what organization he wanted to work for. So his senior year, he decided to intern at UAlbany's office of communications and marketing. He worked there for eight hours a week for no credit and was just looking for the experience. At least get credit, get something out of the internship. 

After graduating from UAlbany, he worked in PR for a government procurement company titled BidNet. He was working on their social media accounts, and marketing. But he realized he didn't have much of a passion for this company. So when the opportunity opened up here full time, he was really excited to come back to UAlbany. "There's a sense of pride working here and a passion that I don't think I would get in a lot of other places," he said. "I'm working on a greater mission here to help my institution succeed."

What Nolan really enjoys about PR is being able to take the research the university and watch the story expand into these other media outlets. He also likes how there are collaboration opportunities for him to work with journalists on pitching stories for them to cover about UAlbany. However, Nolan also acknowledges that working in pr can be stressful. He doesn't like dealing with the crisis communications side as much and will sometimes receive calls at 8:30 at night about something that happened on campus. 

 

As far as any advice to anyone who might be interested in PR, he believes it's important for people to keep exploring.“If you're really passionate about telling the news, making sure there's transparency in the world and you're really passionate about journalism, then go that route," he said. "It just depends on what you want with your career.”