Men's Basketball | January 01, 2016

To borrow a phrase from the NCAA, Austin Peay has more than 300 student-athletes and just about all of them will be going pro in something other than sports. Over the years, several of Austin Peay's departed student-athletes have gone on to do big things in their chosen field. Zac Schlader—Dr. Zac Schlader, actually—is one such name, and the professor at the University of Buffalo recently talked to LetsGoPeay.com about the path his career has taken him—from the Dunn Center court as a stand-out basketball player to New Zealand for his doctoral work and back stateside again.

When Zac Schlader walks in his classroom, his students take notice.

That's not just because Dr. Schlader is a professor in the department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at the University of Buffalo, although that does enable one to command a certain level of respect at the head of the classroom.

It's just that most professors aren't 6-9.

A former center (2002-05) on the Austin Peay basketball team, Schlader's name harkens back to Austin Peay's glory years. A thousand-point scorer, Schlader still ranks ninth in school history with 79 career blocked shots and was a major contributor on the best defensive team—and some would argue best team, period—in Austin Peay history: the 2003-04 squad that went 16-0 during regular season Ohio Valley Conference play also limited opponents to 60.5 points per game on 41.1 percent shooting overall and 32.2 percent from beyond the arc.

During the recruiting process the former Columbia, Missouri native and his family were enamored with the then just-completed Sundquist Science Complex. As a result, after the Academic All-America's APSU graduation Schlader passed on a professional basketball career that most certainly would have him taken abroad. No, the former Steve Hamilton Sportsmanship Award recipient embarked on a different type of world tour, first stopping in Bloomington, Indiana to earn his master's at Indiana University. Next stop… New Zealand?

Yep. For three years, Schlader and his wife, Cassie (Hill, a former Lady Govs soccer player), lived way down under while he completed his PhD at Massey University's School of Sport and Exercise.

"When I did my master's at IU, I started looking around to where I wanted to do my PhD," Schlader said. "Science is very international, so I had been in touch with a guy in New Zealand and I applied for it. Essentially, it was a full ride; they paid for my flights, I never paid a dime. I had some other options, but my wife and I decided it was an opportunity we couldn't' pass up.

"It was awesome. It was a much different experience than either of us thought it would be. We really took to the culture of New Zealand and the Kiwi way of life. I think part of that is because we lived in a smaller college town that didn't have a lot of the American influence, so we were able to get away and be immersed in the culture."

He came back to the states to work on his post-doctoral research, and I'll let him take it from there because I'm not smart enough to describe what came next.

"How research works is you get your PhD, and your post-doc period is where you refine what you want to do," Schlader said. "The research (at the University of Texas' Southwestern Medical Center at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine) is more clinical, so it moved out of the exercise performance side of things and into how to help patients. It honed in on what I wanted to do when I got an independent job."

Now Schlader teaches and researches at Buffalo. He estimates around 70 percent of his time is taken up with research—at a university home to nearly 30,000 students, research takes on a bigger priority for professors than at smaller universities. Currently, Schlader's research focuses on the impact the environment has on our ability to perform.

"Right now, I'm interested in temperature and how temperature affects cardiovascular health and cardiovascular performance in a number of different populations—we study young, healthy, adults, people that work in fields like firefighting and mining, as well as people who are older; older adults are at risk of bad stuff happening when there's a cold wave or a heat wave, so we're trying to understand why that's happening."

If you're having a hard time seeing how all this ties back in to sports, you're probably not alone. But Schlader says that even though he doesn't need to work on his footwork in the post or lift weights to be good at this job, some of the values instilled when he was playing for head coach Dave Loos still apply.

"Playing basketball at Austin Peay, I had to learn teamwork," Schlader said. "A lot of people don't know how to work in teams and don't know how to interact. With people coming from different walks of life and different perspectives, it's important to be able to understand where everyone is coming from and work toward a common goal. Something lost to people outside of research is that research is a team, a group of people working together to accomplish a given study or try to solve a problem. It's not very different from a team working on a basketball court trying to win. All the parts have to be working at the top of their game in order to succeed."

When you think of professors, what comes to mind? Does your mind evoke someone older, distinguished, who brandishes thought-provoking paeans at young, malleable minds? Because that's not Schlader. But it will be eventually, as he continues his never-ending quest for knowledge. 

"I'm always trying to figure out something more than I knew yesterday," he said. "(I'm) always asking questions and moving forward. I don't think there's an end goal; I don't think I'll ever say, 'Well, we know everything so I'll retire now.' But I think that's why I enjoy it. Essentially, my job is to learn something new every day. It's a challenge, but that's also what makes it fun."

If you think you know of an interesting subject for our 'Going Pro in Something Other Than Sports' series, email Colby Wilson at wilsonrc@apsu.edu.