Have Fulbrights, will travel

Dr. Don Neumann, professor of physical therapy, embarks on his fifth Fulbright award, while departmental colleague Dr. Guy Simoneau receives his second.

By Tracy Staedter

After a devastating motorcycle accident nearly killed him at 19, Don Neumann spent months in a Florida hospital, recovering from a broken pelvis and legs and a crushed hip. The experience set a course for his career. Some five decades later, Neumann, professor of physical therapy, has excelled in the field that gave his broken body the ability to walk again. He is the author of the authoritative text on the topic of kinesiology, Human Kinesiology: Foundations for Rehabilitation, which has been translated into eight languages, and has contributed chapters to the medical textbook Gray’s Anatomy, among many other achievements.

In spring 2022, Neumann will again use a Fulbright award — his fifth — to disseminate knowledge around human kinesiology. This time, a Fulbright Foreign Scholarship will take him to the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland. There, he will teach a popular dissection course for clinical physical therapists that he’s been teaching at Marquette for 30 years, give seminars to faculty and collaborate on a study that focuses on the hip joint in children who play the Gaelic stick-and-ball game hurling. Neumann is one of two professors this year from the College of Health Science physical therapy department to receive a Fulbright award; Dr. Guy Simoneau, professor of physical therapy, is the other.

Previous Fulbright awards have taken him to Lithuania, Japan and twice to Hungary. The cultural and educational exchanges — facilitated with the help of a translator — left an impression on him. In Lithuania, which had regained its independence from the Soviet Union a couple of years before his visit, he found students with few resources. He gave them 30 copies of Human Kinesiology to share and supplied the anatomy labs with skeletons. Three of his students were blind and learned by feeling the bone connections in those skeletons. One of those students received the highest score in the class. “It taught me to expect more out of students in the U.S., who know the language and can see me,” says Neumann.

In Ireland, Neumann won’t need a translator. And it turns out his connection to the country is deeper than he could have anticipated. Right before applying for the Fulbright award, he learned that his mother, who’d been adopted, had parents born in Ireland. He suddenly realized he also had an opportunity to explore his cultural roots. “That’s what’s neat about a Fulbright. It’s a cultural exchange using education as a medium,” he says.

From Nepal to Brazil

Neumann’s physical therapy colleague Simoneau has been awarded a second Fulbright, a follow-up to one that took him to Nepal in 2014 to work with the country’s only physical therapy program. For his second, Simoneau will spend four months in Brazil, between February and May 2022, at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. There, he will work with Dr. Rafael Zambelli Pinto, lecturer in physical therapy, to conduct a clinical trial for interventions that could treat chronic low back pain in elderly patients.

“Low back pain is the number one condition for ‘years lived with disability’ in every country in the world,” says Simoneau. “Although the older population is especially affected by chronic low back pain, this group is underrepresented in non-surgical and non-pharmacological clinical trials,” says Simoneau.

Drawing from his experience as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy from 2002 to 2015, Simoneau will also help further develop the editorial quality of the Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy, of which Dr. Pinto is the editor-In-chief.

Simoneau will also offer seminars and workshops for graduate students and faculty on research methods and scientific writing and publishing.

Drawing from his experience as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy from 2002 to 2015, Simoneau will also help further develop the editorial quality of the Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy, of which Dr. Pinto is the editor-In-chief.

Simoneau will also offer seminars and workshops for graduate students and faculty on research methods and scientific writing and publishing.