Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach Liz Vlad is in her ninth year with Youngstown State athletics. Vlad handles strength and conditioning workouts for soccer, men's and women's golf, men's and women's tennis, swimming and diving and cross country.

She joined the YSU staff in June 2002 under then coach Todd Burkey. Vlad is now works under Strength & Conditioning Coordinator Mike Cochran.

While at Youngstown State, she has worked with the volleyball and women's basketball programs in past years. She has developed water-based workouts for the track and field programs, created the YSU Women's Team Challenge to promote fitness and she continues to run strength and conditioning program camps for High School athletes.

Besides her role in athletics, Vlad is also a Health and Human Performance and Exercise Science instructor on campus.

Vlad also serves as a fitness specialist at the Youngstown YMCA. She has been with the YMCA since 1999 serving in such capacities as a spinning instructor, a civil service and senior weight training and fitness instructor and an aquatic exercise therapist.

She has a background as a nuclear medicine technologist before moving into physical fitness.

She worked for seven years at Presbyterian Hospitals of Dallas, Texas, before spending a year at Warren General Hospital. In both capacities she handled cardiac stress testing and other diagnostic testing and imaging.

Vlad earned her Bachelor's of Science degree in Exercise Physiology from YSU in 2002. She is a nuclear medicine technology graduate of The Ohio State University Hospitals (1981) and graduated from the Youngstown Hospital Association's Radiotechnology Program in 1980.

Vlad holds certifications as a Strength and Conditioning Specialist from the National Strength and Conditioning Association; as a Health Fitness Instructor from the American College of Sports Medicine and as a Physical Fitness Specialist from the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas.