Transformations
His world got bigger
Rolandas Kesminas, fresh out of graduate school, was working as an instructor in Lithuania when Marquette professor Dr. Don Neumann arrived to teach physical therapy. Kesminas didn’t know it at the time, but his world was about to get bigger.
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| “Being at Marquette was a wonderful educational and cultural experience. The people there were so giving. Now I want to give back.” |
“I had just finished my master’s degree in rehabilitation science, specializing in adaptive physical activity, and was teaching when Dr. Neumann arrived,” Kesminas says. “Since I was one of the few people who spoke English, I interpreted his lectures.”
Despite the language barriers, Neumann’s classes were popular. “They were all full,” Kesminas says. “He’s got a gift and loves what he’s doing.
“He invited me to attend Marquette for a 4- to 5-week gross-dissection and kinesiology course in summer 2004,” Kesminas says. While here, he observed PT, American-style. “There are differences in both the content and the way PT is taught in the United States,”
he says. “There’s more kinesiology, manual therapy skills and labs. In Lithuania, most physical therapy instructors are not practicing ones, so most of their classes are theoretical.”
Neumann encouraged Kesminas to apply for a Fulbright Student Scholarship.
He did, and was back at Marquette in 2005, taking kinesiology, athletic training and advanced orthopaedics classes while observing at sports medicine clinics. “My attitude was not, ‘Now I can teach everything in Lithuania,’” he says, “but to go back and say, “‘this is
how they do it in the U.S.’”
When his Fulbright ended in August, Kesminas returned to Lithuania and is teaching at the Lithuanian Academy of Physical Education in its physical therapy and sports medicine departments. He also teaches continuing education courses; works in an outpatient clinic to keep his manual therapy skills sharp; and is helping to write a book of terms for Lithuanian PTs.
As if that was not enough, he also plans to conduct research, participate in a teaching exchange program and get a doctorate — all things he had never dreamed of doing when he first came to Marquette.
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