Ella Kitchens, Editor-in-Chief

In the Mitchell Recreation & Athletic Center’s Fieldhouse, dozens of round tables were set up for Big Red Weekend. Former Denison athletes, along with Denison alumni in general, returned to the Hill on Nov. 6-8 to celebrate their college years.

Tara Witkowski was already on campus. She graduated from Denison in 2024 as a double major in biology and global health, earned a masters degree at the University of Minnesota, and returned as an assistant swim coach.

When Witkowski first got to Denison, she was considering the pre-med track. Her sophomore year, she was introduced to the global health program.

“I really just fell in love with the topic itself and the subject matter,” she said. “So then I wanted to pursue more courses, and ended up majoring in global health as well as biology.”

During all four years at Denison, she was also on the women’s swim team, a responsibility that took up a large portion of her time.

After graduation, she earned a masters in public health at the University of Minnesota, specializing in environmental health. She described Minnesota as “a really great school.”

“They have a great school of public health, great rapport,” she said. “The professors are outstanding out there.”

During her time at Minnesota, she was employed in the zoonotic diseases unit of the Minnesota Department of Health, working with the pathogen C. diff. She looked at the surveillance of the pathogen, conducted case interviews, and worked at the rabies hotline.

“I really loved working up there,” she said.

Witkowski mentioned that Denison prepared her well for masters classes.

“I felt like the curriculum here prepared my critical thinking skills, communication skills, writing, everything like that to then lead to a master’s,” she said.

However, there were times it was difficult transitioning from Denison, where swimming took up a large portion of her time, to suddenly having nothing but classes and work in Minnesota.

“It was a relief to only have school to focus on. But also I felt like I was in a rut of how to get my body moving or how to get exercise during the day. I thrived on having this rigorous schedule while at Denison and then poof, it’s just done.”

After graduating from Minnesota, Witkowski visited Denison while her sister was looking for potential colleges to attend. She talked to the head swim coach while she was back, and he “out of the blue offered me an assistant coaching position.”

While at Minnesota, Witkowski learned skills such as epidemiological investigation and data analytics. These are skills she doesn’t use in her job now. However, there are still skills from her undergraduate and graduate experience she applies to her life now.

“That adjacent public health lens of mental health, behavioral health, that side of swimming, like being able to talk to the swimmers if they’re having a hard day, hard set, like, ‘OK, what can we do to make this just a little bit better?’” said Witkowski. “There are definitely things within my public health and global health education that I have received that I’m using currently.”

While she loves working as a swim coach, Witkowski is still looking for a role in public health. But the current state of the public health world is challenging for recent graduates.

“People are struggling finding roles right now,” she said. “A lot of the friends I know in the field have moved to a different field for the time being, to wait until the storm passes. And others I know have landed roles.”

Witkowski describes her work as fulfilling.

“It’s been a really rewarding experience helping out the swimmers,” she said. “I went through the program and know exactly how they’re feeling in the water. The nerves, the excitement about times and meets and everything in between like that.”