Although 2026 NCAA National Basketball Champion Will Tschetter (BS ’24, MS ’26) has always been interested in environmental issues, it was an internship experience in Bozeman, Montana, working on a bison ranch focused on holistic management and regenerative agriculture that inspired him to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS).

Reflecting on the internship, Tschetter says, “I got super involved in the ecology of how farming systems work, so this was the best fit for me to continue my studies,” but he says that a combination of life experiences led him to pursue a bachelor’s in Earth and Environmental Sciences in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and then to specialize in Ecosystem Science and Management at SEAS. 

One such experience, he explains, was watershed pollution issues in his family farm’s county in Minnesota, where he grew up, and witnessing restoration projects in the river that ran through their backyard. Another influential experience was his family's two-year move to Beijing, China, where he lived with air pollution he’d never encountered back home.

“I went from being a kid who spent all his time outside and never had to worry about air quality to not being able to play outside some days because the air quality was so bad,” says Tschetter. “It was a culmination of a lot of things [that led me to SEAS]. I’m super passionate about fishing and being out in the water, hence the master’s project I was involved with.” 

Tschetter's master's project was a capstone, an option available to SEAS graduate students that provides an opportunity to work with a group of peers and real-world clients to make an impact. His group's project was focused on providing a comprehensive overview of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative—a decades-long, federally funded effort to protect and restore the Great Lakes. 

Now that he’s completed his studies, Tschetter says his focus will remain on growing his basketball career after five years on U-M’s team, which included plenty of highs and lows but ended with the highest of highs after securing U-M’s first national championship since 1989. It was announced today that his next move will take him to Perth, Australia, where he’ll play for the Warwick Senators, but he says he wants to put what he’s learned at U-M to good use once his basketball career concludes. 

“I’ll continue to play basketball. I love doing it. I get to travel the world, I get to experience all sorts of different things, but eventually, I want to start my own regenerative farm,” says Tschetter. “That’s my end goal.”

Reflecting on his experience at SEAS, Tschetter says he’ll especially remember the cool, unique stories and the people he met. 

“There are all sorts of different experiences, and you learn a lot from people, and their different interests can spark something that you may not have thought you were interested in, like soil ecology. I never thought that I'd be interested in it, and now I’d say that that’s one of the things that I’m most interested in when it comes to regenerative agriculture,” says Tschetter. 

For prospective U-M students, Tschetter says his best advice is to keep an open mind.

“I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I came here thinking I was going to do environmental engineering, because my parents were both engineers, and then I figured out that’s not what I want to do, so if there’s something you think you want to do, it could change 180, don’t fight that, just be open to it.”