New Student Profile: Health and Sports Enthusiast Cory Wiegers Pursues Exercise Science and Nutrition Degrees

Cory Wiegers has an infectious enthusiasm — for just about everything. Spend 15 minutes chatting with him over lunch and you'll quickly find yourself itching to take up breakdancing, pondering the health benefits of skateboarding and wondering why in the world you've never strapped a thin sheaf of nylon to your back and jumped out of an airplane. You'll also see that with as much vigor as Wiegers attacks Cory Wiegers life, he's equally committed to promoting it.

Bastyr University is lucky that he is now channeling his considerable energy and smarts into its academic programs. A certified personal trainer and an enthusiast of all things outdoors, athletic and extreme, Wiegers started classes at Bastyr this fall to pursue a double major in exercise science and wellness, and nutrition. This 23-year-old's ambitious goal is to one day open a health center that is equal parts strength and conditioning gym, physical therapy clinic, wellness spa and health psychology consultancy.

"I'm really into what the future holds," says Wiegers, who attended high school just 15 minutes from Bastyr. "I completely see the natural health sciences as the future of health. I have a big dream of owning a fitness and wellness center where people walk in and say 'Wow, this is a comfortable spot.' It will be a place people can come to breathe again."

Wiegers believes something is wrong with the current fitness-center model, forming that opinion through personal experience. After high school, his deep interest in healthy living — coupled with a penchant for success in his biology, anatomy and physiology classes — drew him to personal training. He soon earned an associate's degree in fitness training from Lake Washington Technical College and was hired at a local gym. After a few months of working as a trainer, his view on the profession changed.

Wiegers soon felt that the system was failing both the people who came seeking health and those committed to promoting it. "In (personal training) school we were taught to be really people-focused and thoughtful, but the reality of the field was completely different."

Reality check in hand, Wiegers left the gym, found a job in food service and considered his next move. It was then that he remembered the advice of two instructors at Lake Washington Technical College, Tiffany Reiss, PhD, and Stacey Oberst-Peterson, MS, RD. Reiss, chair of the Department of Exercise Science and Wellness at Bastyr University and an adjunct instructor at Lake Washington, and Oberst-Peterson, a Bastyr grad with a Master of Science in Nutrition, both encouraged Wiegers to pursue a Bastyr education as the foundation for a career in physical therapy. They said Bastyr would fit him well.

They were right. Wiegers visited the campus and immediately recognized the adjacent St. Edward State Park as the place he grew up mountain biking and building rope swings. He then knew Bastyr was the place he was meant to be.

"I realized personal training had a ceiling and, if I wanted to pursue my long-term goals, I could be 100 times better as a trainer, if I had the physical therapy and nutrition background," Wiegers says. "When I got here and saw the campus and met the people, I just said to myself, 'This school is me.'"

Now that he's been here a month, does Wiegers have any advice for prospective students?

"Come with an open mind," he says, relating how his first few days at school went by nervously until he got to know his classmates. "The mentality here is pretty unique — Bastyr fills a niche — everyone is looking at the big picture, at what health can really be. That's exciting. When the day's classes are over, I don't just want to go home and get food. I want to stay around and talk with teachers and fellow students. I could hang out here all day."

Interviewed November 2008