Growing up, Zach Mixer loved fitness – playing sports from soccer to martial arts and spending time weight training. Just as enthusiastic about sports and fitness now, Mixer has won the School of Public Health’s 2025 Whitlark Scholarship that supports kinesiology students transferring from a Maryland community college and recognizes them for both academic excellence and commitment to research.
The rising UMD senior jumped to pursue a kinesiology degree when he learned it offered the opportunity to study movement and help people achieve their fitness goals.
“I hadn't thought that I would be going into research, but I felt like I should apply and try it out,” Mixer said. “I was very excited and felt accomplished for winning this opportunity.”
Mixer grew up in the suburban Maryland town of Odenton and transferred to UMD from Anne Arundel Community College. While he is still figuring out the finer details of his future career, he hopes to pursue personal training as a profession.
This scholarship was born in 2018, after Professor Emerita Jane Clark and her partner Jill Whitall, Ph.D. ’88, retired. Clark had served for 37 years as a professor, department chair and dean of the School of Public Health, and Whitall as professor of physical therapy and rehabilitation science in the School of Medicine at the UMD, Baltimore. They both were looking for ways to continue supporting students. In 2020, Clark and Whitall made a bequest commitment: the Whitlark Endowed Scholarship in Kinesiology.
The Whitlark Scholarship encourages students to identify a kinesiology faculty member and join their research program. Mixer will work with research mentor Dr. Sushant Ranadive, associate kinesiology professor, to study cardiovascular health. In particular, he researches why high blood pressure is more common in postmenopausal women than in men.
“It’s always a good sign when a student is not just looking for the monetary benefit, but is drawn to the actual research as well, which has been my impression of Zach,” Ranadive said. “He is a very intelligent student.”