Posted: 7/1/2026
SNR Alumni: Zach Schafer shifts to full-time community work
Zach Schafer, winner of the 2026 Early Career Excellence Alumni Award in the School of Natural Resources, completed his one-year contract as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the end of May. He is now applying research skills gained at the university to aid the wider community with grief.
The co-founder of the Band of the Strong organization in Lincoln and Omaha, Schafer began working full-time with it July 1.
"The nonprofit that I created is a grief-related program, but it was inspired by and founded on my experiences in the School of Natural Resources, which seemed like two completely different worlds," he said. "In some ways, they are, but these experiences in the School of Natural Resources gave me this foundation to help a community that was close to my heart."
Schafer lost his father at 8 years old in a shooting. He did not come across resources to help him deal with grief as a child and became angry in high school, turning to sports as an outlet and supportive friends.
At the University of Nebraska–Lincoln as a major in wildlife ecology and management, he began to see how time outdoors with nature could help in dealing with grief.
"Because of the major that I was in, I truly believe that looking at the world from an ecological perspective freed me up from looking at the world in a black-and-white perspective and gave me what I needed to see an interesting way through healing," Schafer said.
He also began playing guitar and writing music, which helped him make sense of his grief. He learned his father had played guitar, too, giving him a further connection to him.
He and a friend, Zak Courtney, founded Band of the Strong in 2016 while still in college and have run it the past 10 years while carrying out other careers. During that decade, Schafer also lost a brother to brain cancer and a grandmother to ovarian cancer, which affected his career choices and work with Band of the Strong.
Since graduating with his bachelor's degree, Schafer returned to Nebraska to earn his master's in education, taught high school biology in Kearney, worked with suspended students at the Lighthouse nonprofit in Lincoln, returned to Nebraska for his doctoral degree in education and took postdoctoral work with Jenny Dauer, a School of Natural Resources professor. He and others helped Dauer design and teach SCIL 101: Science and Decision-Making for a Complex World.
The class strives to help students develop the ability to engage diverse perspectives, solve problems and impact communities and the world. To do this, students work with community members on a project of personal interest, conduct research on how to gain more impact with the project and present findings in a showcase.
"In the spring semester, I started to infuse my own experiences to show students that science is much more than being in a lab coat and taking samples and processing things," Schafer said.
He had long been frustrated with the common lag between conducting research and having findings get out to where they could help people but said Band of the Strong allowed him to use current research to help the grieving.
In one of the organization's main programs, he and volunteers host events exposing children to artistic and outdoor experiences that can help them address their grief. By telling and retelling their grief story through writing, dance, music or other arts, children become empowered to piece together a new story that leaves them stronger.
In Band of the Strong's "Parent to Parent" podcast with the Angels Among Us organization, parents who have or have had a child with cancer share their stories and advice with other parents. Schafer said parents of children with cancer were an unserved population but, with the podcast, he found they listen to all the episodes and feel less alone.
For the elderly and those at the end of life, Band of the Strong has been creating books with their life stories. Family members ask the loved one questions, and Schafer and others create a book with the answers to serve as a remembrance and aid in grief.
Most recently, he created the StorySong Studio on the organization's website. For five dollars, people can use the app to tell their grief story, and in about 10 minutes, Schafer turns that into a song they can download and keep as a resource.
Despite all of these real-life applications of science research, Schafer said he didn’t see the alumni award coming.
"Maybe it's a Midwest mindset, but it's this idea of, 'Well, you were just doing what you were supposed to be doing. You were doing the best that you could,'" he said.
Dauer, who nominated him for the award, said he was "a perfect emulation of a champion for the natural world" and he cared deeply about students. She said she expected him to be off to great things after his postdoctoral position.
"He is one to watch!" she said.
Schafer said the ultimate vision for his career would be to teach as a professor and do research in the context of his Band of the Strong work. Regardless of whether he can make that a reality, he said he has always marched to the beat of his own drum and will continue to do so.
"I've continued to follow the things that excite me and fill my heart and fill my mind," he said. "I think that even though those things haven't yet made me a billion dollars, and maybe they never will, they have made my life extremely fulfilling and intentional and purposeful."
