Jed C. Smith joined UNI's staff as strength and conditioning coach in June of 2005.

Smith has a wide and varied background in strength and conditioning training. Prior to coming to the Cedar Valley, he was the explosive strength training coach for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. He has also assisted with the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League, the Minnesota Thunder of the United Soccer League and Penn State football in an effort to incorporate explosive strength training into their individual programs.

Beginning in June of 2002, he was an exercise and sports science instructor at Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount, Minn. He also served as the Minnesota USA Weightlifting Regional Training Center director during the same time frame.

He had several coaching assignments at Rosemount High School, including ninth grade boy's basketball and wrestling, starting in 1996. He served as Rosemount's strength training and conditioning coach for all sports from 1997-2002, was head boy's tennis coach from 2000-02, and coached the school's Olympic weight lifting from 1999-2002.

Smith is still heavily involved in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. He coached UNI football player Jason Fiacco, who made the Pan American team in the spring of 2006. Fiacco represented Team USA in Cali, Colombia, where he took home a bronze medal.

Smith is very active in the community, having worked on bringing an Olympic Development Center to the City of Waterloo. In July of 2007, Smith, UNI, Cedar Valley Medical, XL Acceleration and members of the Cedar Valley community opened a non-profit training center with the goal of developing athletes from the grass-roots level up to elite status, eventually to compete and National and World levels in the Sports of Weightlifting and Tae Kwon Do.

Smith earned his bachelor's degree in social science from Minnesota-Morris in 1994, and a second bachelor's degree in psychology in 1995. He received his master's in education in an emphasis in strength and conditioning from Hamline University in 2003.

He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and his wife's name is Tammy.