Superhero reality: Childhood dreams help shape a future at OSU
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Media Contact: Sophia Fahleson | Digital Communications Specialist | 405-744-7063 | sophia.fahleson@okstate.edu
Aleks Schaefer knew from a young age he wanted to impact the world like a “superhero.”
Schaefer grew up in the Texas Panhandle. While in high school, he moved to southwest Kansas.
Throughout his youth, his parents, Erich and Christy, always encouraged and supported him in his education, Schaefer said.
“When my children were little, we would ride bikes a lot and rode in some very rough places, as well,” Erich Schaefer said. “I always told them they have to pedal, pedal, pedal, never stop pedaling, and to look where they want to go, not where they don’t want to go.”
Christy and Erich Schaefer now hear those sayings when their sons talk to their grandchildren, Erich Schaefer said.
Those are the lines of the family, Christy Schaefer said.
Christy Schaefer always encouraged her two sons to do well in school, to get good grades, to study, and to do the things they needed to do to be successful, Erich Schaefer said.
“Aleks played with superheroes a lot, and he wanted to grow up and be a superhero,” Erich Schaefer said. “We were always pushing education for our boys, even when they were just little bitty 3-year-old guys. We would talk about them going to ‘superhero’ college and where they would go to do that and how they’d accomplish that.”
Aleks Schaefer enrolled in 2004 at Friends University, a Bible college in Wichita, Kansas, where he played on the football team, sang in the choir, and participated in clubs.
He met his wife, Kasie Schaefer, and after graduation in 2008, they moved to the Kansas City area. He earned a law degree in 2011 from the University of Kansas, focusing on international trade and finance.
“When I was getting my degree, I kind of fell in love with this type of economics,” said Aleks Schaefer, now an associate professor in the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics.
While he was in law school, he also took math and economics classes in preparation for a doctorate.
After he graduated law school, he went to the University of California, Davis, where he earned a doctorate in agricultural economics.
“I’ve gotten the opportunity to go all over the world,” Aleks Schaefer said. “My first job was at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Then, I was a professor at the University of London and came back to the U.S.”
He worked for Michigan State University for a few years before coming to Oklahoma.
“We’ve been trying to get back here closer to home since I graduated,” Aleks Schaefer said.
While he and his family were at MSU, a job became available at OSU.
“It didn’t fit me very well, but another position opened that did,” he said. “It was sort of my dream job, and I was able to come back.”
Aleks Schaefer brought his international experience, knowledge, connections and collaborations to OSU, he said.
Multiple members of Aleks Schaefer’s family attended OSU, which made him excited to work at a place his family has been, he said.
His job also allowed him to move his family closer to his parents and grandmother, he added.
Aleks Schaefer’s grandfather, Kurt Schaefer, earned his doctorate at OSU in entomology and taught at Oklahoma Panhandle State University.
“The reason that OSU is one of the coolest places in the world is because we get to be in a wonderful small town, kind of the heart of America,” Aleks Schaefer said.
Aleks and Kasie Schaefer have two daughters, Haven, 11, and Ryan, 8.
Until moving to Stillwater, Oklahoma, the family never felt like they had a place to call home, Aleks Schaefer said.
“They just seem to be so much more relaxed, happy and engaged with all the things that are going on around here,” Christy Schaefer said.
OSU has always felt like home, even though he never lived in Stillwater, Aleks Schaefer said.
“It’s just wonderful to get to be home and get to do this job in a place like Stillwater and at a place like Oklahoma State University,” Aleks Schaefer said.
OSU has changed the lives of Aleks Schaefer and his family because of how lucky they feel to be a part of such a tight-knit community, he added.
“It is just indescribable how much it feels like we are grounded in Stillwater,” Schaefer said.
For Aleks Schaefer, getting to be a professor at OSU was a dream come true because not only can he do what he loves but also because he is in a place that feels like home, Christy Schaefer said.
Now, Aleks Schaefer can be a faculty “superhero” and impact students and beyond within the halls of the OSU Ferguson College of Agriculture.
Story by Emily Wise | Cowboy Journal