Not long after visiting some family in the Washington, D.C. area, Paul Nooney decided that it was time to leave his native Albany, N.Y., where he had lived his entire life.
Nooney, who joined the Schar School of Government and Policy at George Mason University as the new associate director of master’s student services this September, is no stranger to change. After spending his early career years teaching high school science in upstate New York, he decided to pursue his passion and enthusiasm for student advising and support services and returned to graduate school to study higher education administration.
He spent four and a half years working in the Office of First-Year Experience at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
“I enjoy helping students get to the next level of their educational careers,” he said. “I see it more as student relations—it is very fulfilling.”
At Rensselaer, Nooney managed the School’s largest mentor program for first-year students in STEM classes which was funded through a $1.2 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
With a team of about 130 mentors, Nooney supported more than 1,200 undergraduate students in developing the skills necessary for a successful academic career focused in the sciences.
“It was a very neat program to run. I brought in exciting guest speakers, like astronauts, to talk to and inspire students,” he said.
In his new role at the Schar School, Nooney will be the primary advisor to multiple master’s programs and will play a lead role in the development and delivery of student support initiatives and programming.
“It’s becoming more important to have advanced degrees. So, what we do is becoming more and more important in terms of working with graduate students—helping them through what is not only a life event but is also a giant career move,” he said.
Nooney holds master’s degrees in college student services administration and secondary education, both from the College of Saint Rose, and a bachelor of science in atmospheric science from University at Albany, SUNY.