Those involved or interested in RPI athletics should know the next nominee for person of the year. His name is Kevin Beattie, and he is the sports information director here at Rensselaer. He has been in that position since August 1998. Some of the responsibilities of his job are to handle all of the public relations, media, publications, and statistics for all 23 of Rensselaer’s sports teams. Beattie also is a Rensselaer Athletics Hall of Fame selection committee member and is part of the athletics department’s Task Force for Marketing and Promotion Subcommittee.
Beattie also coordinates all of the content for the newsletters that you read and does the background and history of the people in them. Also, if you play a sport or go to any of the games, then you have probably seen him around since he attends many of the sports events.
Before Beattie became sports information director here, he worked for the Albany River Rats, where he was director of communications for three years and the media and public relations assistant for one. He also held a position as editor-in-chief of The State Times for one-and-one-half years in 1992 and 1993.
If one thing could be changed though, Beattie would like to see more money put into Rensselaer’s athletics department. He sees the recruiting that the coaches and staff do as a very valuable asset to this school, and that sometimes its ability to get quality student athletes to attend Rensselaer is underestimated. Another thing that he would like to see is more help in the athletics department because many areas of it are understaffed now.
Beattie likes the kind of athlete that is here at Rensselaer more than anything else. He notices and appreciates that there is a different type of student athlete here that is friendly and considerate to others and to the coaches and staff that they work with. Beattie also notices the same thing with the coaches, saying, "the atmosphere that the coaches keep here is excellent."
Look for voting instructions in upcoming issues of The Poly to support Beattie for Person of the Year.
