鶹ѡToday will be following a group of Golden Flashes for the 2025-26 academic year, chronicling their efforts and successes during the fall and spring semesters. The group of students is at various stages in their 鶹ѡ academic careers and will share their experiences as they participate in our distinctive programs, research and campus activities.
The first thing you will learn about brothers Will and Ray Maynard is that they are twins – not identical in looks, but in nearly all other aspects.
Ray Maynard is the older brother by 41 minutes. Will Maynard is the taller brother.
“Everyone always says he took all the food,” Ray Maynard teases his younger, bigger twin.
By the end of their first semester at Kent State, each will have enough credits to be classified as juniors, even though they just arrived on campus in August to begin their first year, sort of.
The brothers, from Green, Ohio, spent their entire senior year of high school taking College Credit Plus (CCP) courses at Kent State’s Stark Campus, with Ray Maynard even taking an organic chemistry class at the Kent Campus.
When they graduated from Green High School in May 2025, Ray Maynard had already amassed 60 college credits, and Will Maynard 54. Will Maynard is taking 18 credits this semester and next to catch up to ensure they both graduate together, which they expect will happen in May of 2027.
Both are majoring in biological sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences, and both are looking for careers in the medical field. As first-year students, they are already studying for the Medical College Admissions Test, or MCAT, which they expect to take at the end of the spring semester.
Depending on how their test scores turn out, they will decide whether they pursue medical school to become physicians or another healthcare field.
The job of an anesthesiologist assistant appeals to both, but Will Maynard has also considered nursing and physical therapy.
He managed to break two toes, his tibia and fracture his knee as a teen, which is where his interest in the medical profession began.
“I just completely fractured my knee. I went up for a layup, and it just like popped open,” Will Maynard described one of his basketball injuries. “It was crazy, but then I had surgery, and the next year broke the exact same bone, just an inch down.”
After spending time in the hospital and physical therapy, he came to appreciate the power of modern medicine.
“I think it’s so amazing how medicine is so advanced,” he said. “I’m like 100% recovered, and I feel great now. But when that happens to you, you feel like you are never going to be the same. I’ve made a full recovery from everything that I’ve gone through, and I’m thankful for that. And I just think it’s so amazing what medicine is capable of.”
The brothers admit to being overachievers, and even their parents, Raymond Sr. and Stephanie Maynard, suggested that they might want to enjoy high school a bit more, rather than spending their senior year taking college courses. Their family includes younger siblings Max and Lucy Maynard, eighth graders who are also twins, as well as twin dogs.
But the brothers were motivated.
“I wanted to do this for myself, to show that I can do this. It’s always been a goal and I’ve always wanted to achieve it,” Ray Maynard said. “I just wanted to stand out a little bit and prove to myself that I can do harder classes, and it’s not just about your age, it’s more about if you are capable or not.”
Will Maynard, too, had the desire to excel academically from the time he was young.
“Especially senior year, I had a choice to either take a bunch of classes that were kind of blow off classes, or do CCP at Kent Stark,” he said, “It just made so much sense to do that. I still hung out with my friends on the weekends and went to football games, but I also got to feel fulfilled, like taking these classes actually meant something toward my future.”
Taking most of their classes together also meant they didn’t have to go it alone, the twins say.
They made the most of their time at 鶹ѡStark, classes, and even getting involved in the research lab of Dinah Qutob, Ph.D., assistant professor of biological sciences, where they studied how aberrant SUMOylation of SOX 3 could potentially lead to the dedifferentiation of neurons into glioblastoma stem cells.
Will Maynard said he was interested in the research because it has potential applications in cancer treatment and for the hands-on lab experience.
At Qutob’s urging, both applied to and were accepted into the Brain Health Research Institute Undergraduate Fellows Program, where they were two of 11 undergraduate fellows who spent the summer taking an active role in brain health research while learning about the institute and its operations.
Kent State, an R1 research institution, offers top-tier research in many fields and encourages students to get involved in undergraduate research as soon as possible.
Later this month, they will be presenting their research and findings at the Brain Health Research Institute’s annual neuroscience symposium.
The Maynard brothers chose 鶹ѡfor several reasons. They knew all their CCP credits would transfer seamlessly. And some of their best high school friends were attending 鶹ѡ– one of whom is now a roommate – and they wanted to be able to maintain those friendships.
Their first semester on campus has had its ups and downs.
Ray Maynard is enjoying the independence and has even discovered that he likes keeping his residence hall room well vacuumed. On the downside, his girlfriend of more than two years broke up with him via text, which was a low point.
Will Maynard has found out that his heavy course load is challenging from a time management perspective, and said the pain of organic chemistry is real, but he enjoys the meal plan and likes not having to spend time cooking. “I think the food’s pretty good,” he said.
They have already joined some student organizations, gone to football games and made new friends, and are looking forward to everything their first semester on campus holds.