Handing Off A Future Through Hands-On Education
The Olympic media demands to be fed. They do so persistently, loudly, sometimes obnoxiously. At the 2002 Winter Games, they ordered up every last morsel of glitter and glamour that surrounded the U.S. speedskaters, darlings of those Games. This put Nick Paulenich, Hiram Class of 1996, on the Winter Games’ hot seat. He was the media’s server.
As U.S. Speedskating public relations director, Paulenich, at age 27, found
his skills and confidence tested in ways that might have shaken older, more
experienced professionals.
Mary Wagner, Hiram Class of 1993, knew the kind of heat Paulenich was under. As communications director of USA Swimming, she had experienced the same thing during the 2000 Olympic Summer Games. More importantly, Wagner also knew Paulenich.
She was his unofficial mentor at Hiram College in 1992-93 as the experienced
senior, majoring in communication and working in the Office of College
Relations, nurturing the then-promising, but painfully shy, first-year student
Paulenich. Now, they were both out there on their own, in the thick of the fray,
caught in glare of the media’s headlights. It had all happened so fast.
“Sometimes,” Wagner said, “I look at myself and say: ‘I can’t believe I graduated from college just nine years ago.’ I’ve moved up so quickly.”
If anything, Paulenic's disbelief was greater than Wagner’s, his climb from Southington, Ohio, swifter. He graduated from Hiram only six years ago with a degree in communication. After earning a master’s degree in public relations from Ball State University, Paulenich, in no small part on the strength of a portfolio of work from Hiram, fast-talked himself into the job of explaining a sport he knew nothing about.
That was in 1999. By the time the Winter Games unfolded in Salt Lake City, Utah, three years later, Paulenich had educated himself about speedskating, both long- and short-track. Paulenich had learned at Hiram how to learn anything he needed to know and applied this to speedskating. He probed the minds of coaches and skaters. He carried a rules book as if it were his Bible. Wagner knew the Olympics would be a new lesson.
“At the Olympics, you deal with a lot of situations behind the scenes that people don’t know about,” she said, “and it’s very stressful. The media are working under extreme deadline pressure, so they’re very testy. The first two days of the Olympics, I had media just screaming at me, wanting athletes to talk to - right now.”
Katie Marquard, executive director of U.S. Speedskating, witnessed such media demands. “They want something yesterday,” she said. “I probably would be terrible in Nick’s job. After every race, the media zone for reporters and skaters is just a zoo.”
All of the athletes - even the disappointed ones who failed to win medals - are required to pass through the media zone so they can respond to questions. Paulenich and Wagner had to assure the athletes fulfill this obligation. If the media zone can become a verbal free-for-all, the medal winners’ formal press conference can be equally unnerving and intimidating, particularly when your athletes are the stars of the U.S. Olympic Team, as 2002 speedskaters such as Derek Parra, Chris Witty and Apolo Anton Ohno were.
“If someone had told me that I would be moderating a press conference in front of 600 people, I would have said: ‘No way,’” Paulenich explained.
Yet at Hiram, Nick Paulenich had found there was a way. As a result of his liberal arts education and his hands-on experience with sports information, he was able to keep the speedskaters on track, off the track. It didn’t all come naturally.
“At first,” said Mary Ann Brockett, Hiram College professor of communication, “Nick was shy and didn’t volunteer much in class, but navigating the Hiram experience brought him out.”
The Hiram experience isn’t for everyone. “If you want to go to class and then just hide, there are schools you can go to - but Hiram isn’t one of them,” said Tim Bryan, Assistant to the President for College Relations. “At Hiram, people are going to find out your interests - whether it’s sports information or biology - and they’re going to assume you want to be a part of things.”
Wagner seized every opportunity.
“I just wanted to put my hands in everything,” she said.
The memory of it makes Bryan chuckle. Mary Wagner was so ambitious, he said, “that we had to bring her along slowly so that she didn’t get overwhelmed at the start.” Bigger successes followed small ones.
In the College Relations office, communication students, as well as those from other disciplines, begin with formulaic work such as a press release to the hometown newspaper of a student studying abroad.
“Do it his way,” Bryan explains to the students, “and it won’t be bad.”
Once the writer gains confidence, Bryan ups the ante: “OK,” he will say, “what’s better than that? What else could you add to the story? How would you do it?”
“Tim is really good in giving students more responsibility as he thinks they are maturing and able to handle it,” Brockett said.
“Tim,” Wagner agreed, “is very patient.”
College Relations is not the only place at Hiram where this careful nurturing occurs, nor is Bryan the only person who offers students hands-on opportunities. In biology, students work side-by-side with professors in the lab, doing original research that they can present at national conferences. In political science, a first-year student may have the chance to chair the Model United Nations Club. Opportunities are as limitless as imagination.
“That’s just the way things happen here,” Bryan said.
The rewards can be both immediate and far-reaching. Wagner became, for all practical purposes, Hiram’s sports information director. For three years, she had a place at the table during College Relations staff meetings. She attended conference athletic meetings. When someone called for sports information, they talked to Mary Wagner.
“I think that is one of the reasons the University of Florida swooped her up,” Bryan said.
Wagner’s experience did influence her selection as a Florida sports-information intern, an experience that led to a full-time job at Florida and eventually to USA Swimming.
“I can’t emphasize the hands-on approach enough,” said Mary Howard, Florida’s assistant athletic director for sports information who hired Wagner. “There is no substitute for it. Hiram is doing a wonderful service for its students.”
For all of Wagner’s experience, however, Howard still harbored reservations concerning her ability to transfer what she had learned in Division III athletics - on the soccer field as a player and in sports information - to Division I-A.
“Division I and Division III are different beasts,” Howard said.
Wagner addressed Howard’s concerns during her interview at Florida, and then, upon her return to Hiram, re-addressed them in a letter to Howard. Wagner’s writing and her follow-up proved persuasive.
“That letter,” Howard said, “sealed the deal for her.”
Howard never regretted hiring Wagner. “She worked her way in seamlessly, took on responsibility and followed through. She came in mature, ready and open to what needed to be done. She did a great job.”
Wagner’s example was not lost on Paulenich. “I had a lot of respect for what Mary had done,” said Paulenich, who found he could ask a fellow student things he might be reluctant to ask Bryan or other College Relations staff members.
“With another student,” Paulenich said, “you don’t feel intimidated about asking questions that may come off as stupid.”
As Paulenich took over sports information following Wagner’s graduation, Bryan thrust him into situations that forced him to confront his shyness and overcome the feeling that he might say something stupid. At pre-season media days when Hiram was a member of the Ohio Athletic Conference, Bryan would leave Paulenich, then 19, alone to answer the media’s questions.
“It’s a trial by fire,” Bryan said. “In Nick’s case, I put him in situations where he had to talk to folks. I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t believed he would rise to the challenge.”
Because he took the time to look, Bryan found Paulenich’s strengths. “I was quiet,” Paulenich said, “but Tim still saw that I had potential and skills for the field.”
Mary Wagner and Nick Paulenich have found places not only in their field but also on a Hiram College Relations Wall of Fame, where photos of graduates who have worked in the office are captioned with explanations of what the person is doing today. There are students from a number of disciplines, including Matt Mesaros, who has put his ability to communicate to work in environmental science.
When someone asks Bryan, “Who are these people?” it offers him the opportunity to explain that a Hiram education comes in many forms. Wagner, for one, had never thought of sports information as a career. In fact, until she came to Hiram from North Ridgeville, Ohio, she didn’t even know there were careers in sports information.
Today, when she isn't at the Olympics, she supervises a staff of two and each year hires an intern to work at the USA Swimming office in Colorado Springs.
“If someone from Hiram applies,” Wagner said, “I am going to look very closely at the application. I know the kind of education they are getting. I know they’re learning how to think for themselves.”
In the classroom - and outside of it.