By Dave Person
Since graduating from Parchment High School 11 years ago, Meredith Stutz-Bottger has been on a whirlwind journey of academics, athletics and international travel that ultimately has resulted in the title of doctor of physical therapy and a career working in cancer rehab.
“I absolutely love what I do,” she says of her job as a physical therapist at “The James,” the familiar term for the James Cancer Center and Solove Research Institute at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
For most of the time since high school, Ohio has been Stutz-Bottger’s home. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in kinesiology from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, playing volleyball for the RedHawks for all four of her undergraduate years.
During that time, the team twice won the Mid-American Conference championship and competed in the NCAA tournament. During the summer after her sophomore year, the team also traveled to Europe to play in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.
Miami also has a strong study-abroad emphasis, Stutz-Bottger says, and while there she participated in experiential learning in Iceland, Nepal, New Zealand and Peru.
“I was very lucky to get to travel as much as I did,” she says.
“I knew I wanted to go to PT school (after earning a master’s degree), but I wasn’t quite ready yet … so I worked at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,” she says.
Her work in the research lab there provided skills that helped prepare her for post-graduate school, but in 2020, before she could make that move, the Covid pandemic hit and she and her three adult siblings all ended up back with their parents, Troy and Shannon Stutz, at the Cooper Township home where they grew up.
That fall, Stutz-Bottger moved to Durham, N.C., to start a three-year doctoral program at Duke University, one of the top physical therapy programs in the country. It was during that time that she began working with patients who were in rehab from a cancer diagnosis or a history of cancer.
“”Durham was a good place to live for a while, get out of the Midwest and experience something new and different,” she says. One of the highlights was enjoying Southern barbecues.
Stutz-Bottger had an eventful year in 2023, earning her doctorate in physical therapy, getting married to her husband, Jared Bottger, and starting an intense, yearlong cancer residency at The James at OSU.
“The goal of a residency program is to give you five years of experience in one year,” she says of the intensity of that period.
She completed the residency last August and “they liked me well enough to hire me on afterward,” she says. “Since that time I’ve been working as a physical therapist … doing outpatient cancer rehabilitation.”
Although 2023 and 2024 were both eventful for Stutz-Bottger, who will turn 29 in June, this year promises to keep that streak going. She and her husband will be welcoming their first child this fall.
Both her experiences at Parchment High School and the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center, from which she also graduated in 2014, have continued to play a part in her life, Stutz-Bottger says.
“KAMSC is where I learned that I really loved anatomy and physiology, which helped me pick my career path as a PT,” she says.
At Parchment, her coaches and teammates in the sports in which she participated had a big influence.
“Some of my best memories and friendships came through athletics, whether it was basketball, volleyball or soccer,” she says, mentioning her coaches for those sports, Wayne Hinton, Anna Knapp and Gordon Miller.
“The lessons I learned from my coaches and teammates carried me through volleyball at the collegiate level and through my habits in my personal life and things I do now,” she says.
“I have great relationships with all of them. They’ll always hold a special place in my heart and I’ll always consider them some of my best friends.”
