Baseball players aren’t known for their academic achievements. After all, being a professional athlete takes time, effort and rigorous training. That doesn’t leave much time for university. However, Mike Marshall has managed to do both.
Marshall attended Michigan State University and earned a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. in Kinesiology. His knowledge in the field has helped him and his teammates treat injuries or avoid them. These days he makes sure to pass that knowledge on to younger generations.
Frank Ryan Has a Ph.D. in Mathematics
Frank Ryan must be the smartest quarterback in football history. Other than his football achievements, this man has done a lot in the academy. Actually, he almost denied the opportunity to play professional football in favor of pursuing an academic career.
Ultimately, Ryan got to do both. In 1964, he led his team to winning the championship, and the following year was when he completed his Ph.D. He even got to teach at the Case Institute of Technology as an assistant professor.
Dexter Holland Is a Molecular Biology Doctor
It feels like ’90s rock is almost its own genre. Bands like Green Day, Smash Mouth and Alien Ant Farm simply blossomed back then. Another such band was The Offspring, who released songs such as Pretty Fly for a White Guy. However, listening to the band’s music will never have you guessing that its lead singer has a full blown Ph.D.
Dexter Holland is passionate about science as he is about music, and it looks like it has been like that since he was a kid, with a high school rock band and a valedictorian graduation. By 2013, Holland was a doctoral student for molecular biology with a B.A. in Biology and an M.A. in Molecular Biology.
Tom Scholz Is a Mechanical Engineer
Touring the world with a rock band is a dream shared by many. However, if you asked Tom Sholz about it, there is a chance he would tell you that he would rather be in a library or making meaningful contributions to science. The thing is, when your rock band fills up stadiums with die hard fans, you don’t have much of a choice but to succumb to the rock star life.
As a student, Scholz has expressed great interest in both music and engineering. He studied classical piano and worked on small engineering projects such as model airplanes in his spare time. Those projects are what inspired him to achieve a B.A. and an M.A. in mechanical engineering at MIT.
Angela Bassett Is a Master of Fine Arts
Doing well at Yale doesn’t come easily to anyone. It takes discipline and hard work, and apparently Angela Bassett knows that all too well. It turns out this movie star has always seen her education as a priority. She did so well in school she became the first African-American student in the National Honor Society when she was in high school.
Basset got into Yale as part of a special program for students with difficult background. That was how she got her B.A. in African American Studies. She later completed another degree, this time it was a Master of Fine Arts, which she got from Yale as well.