YOUNG 70YEARS

UM-Flint’s physical therapy program celebrates its impact on community and graduates

Collegial, enticing, and storied.

“Ihad done my undergraduate work at Oakland University (OU), which was about five minutes from my home in Rochester,” said Guru, ’02DPT. “There was the opportunity to stay at OU for my master’s degree but after visiting UM-Flint and learning about its program, it was clear to me that (Flint) was better at preparing students for all specialties in the field, and there was a relaxed and friendly, yet very cooperative feel about everything. It made the choice to relocate simple.”

And if Guru needed any further confirmation she made the correct decision in choosing UM-Flint, it came shortly after her arrival on the downtown campus.

“About three-quarters of the way through my first year in the program we found out it was going to be changing to a doctoral level program and, basically, we had the option to continue our education for one extra semester in order to earn our DPT,” Guru said. “To have that kind of opportunity, to elevate a master’s degree to a doctoral degree, was really exciting and only confirmed my decision to come to UM-Flint was the right one to have made.”

Guru, now the program coordinator of Mott Community College’s physical therapist assistant program, isn’t alone in having made “the right” decision either.

Since the program’s inception 70 years ago at UM-Ann Arbor – it relocated to UM-Flint in 1983 – more than 2,000 graduates have made their way through the program.

At its inception, graduates were awarded a baccalaureate degree with a certificate in physical therapy. Fast forward to five years after its move to Flint, in 1988, the program’s curriculum was revised to reflect changes in professional expectations, and graduates were awarded a master’s degree before giving way to the DPT in 2002. That move provided not only UM-Flint with its first doctoral degree offering, but also gave the state of Michigan its first DPT program.

Beginning in 2009, the post-professional transitional DPT degree was offered to advance the knowledge of bachelor’s- or master’s-prepared physical therapists who desired to attain the DPT. The DPT/MBA option was added in 2014 so students could enroll in both a professional and a business program.

UM-Flint also offers a physical therapy PhD degree option, a program designed for physical therapists who have already earned a clinical DPT or master’s degree and are interested in pursuing a career in higher education.

“I am so grateful to the former program directors and faculty members who had the wisdom and courage to lead this program through its various transitions and the accompanying challenges with the foresight to know that their efforts would pay off,” said Jennifer Blackwood, ’00MPT, associate professor and director of UM-Flint’s Physical Therapy Department. “We honor their efforts today through our collective impact on the community through the work of our graduates and the research of students and faculty.”

Two people who were there at the very beginning were classmates Ann Oliver and Louise Fry. The two women were not only graduates of the inaugural Class of 1954 but friends and coworkers.

It seems the program’s “collegial” qualities were in effect right from the start, with Oliver and Fry beginning their careers together in Ohio. “One of our instructors at school was leaving the university to open his own practice in Toledo and asked if we’d like to go to work for him, but after interviewing, we decided the town just wasn’t for us,” Oliver said with a laugh. “We’d been classmates and we were friends so when it was time to go out in the real world, we knew we wanted to do it together, just not there.”

While the duo did remain in Ohio, they did it about 140 miles to the east at Akron Children’s Hospital. And while the stay was shorter for Oliver due to the stationing of her husbandto-be on the West Coast, the one year the friends had in Northeast Ohio was memorable, nonetheless.

It was while the pair were there that the hospital’s polio cases climbed to more than 600. A power outage in July cut off all electricity, including secondary line service to the iron lungs, which kept children with polio alive by assisting them with their breathing. Hospital staffers flagged down passing motorists to help manually work the “rocking beds” to keep the patients alive until power was restored two hours later.

“And then, without warning, our supervisor left the hospital when he took off with the mother of one of our patients,” said Oliver. “And all of a sudden, I found myself in charge of the whole department simply because I’d been there the longest, which wasn’t all that long. I was just out of college!”

Oliver credits the preparation that the program provided her for her ability to successfully step in and take the reins. “I took the lead on setting up the polio ward, ordering all the equipment we needed. Louise and I were training some of the doctors on what to do with the patients because our university lessons were so comprehensive. It really was kind of an amazing time, and the University of Michigan made it all possible.”

For Fry, attending U-M was the continuation of a family tradition of sorts as both her parents were graduates. Her father, Kenneth Olmsted, would become an orthopedic surgeon, and instilled in his daughter a passion for health care.

“When I began my collegiate career, I thought about nursing but that was a five-year program and required you to live in a designated building and I just didn’t want to do either of those things,” Fry said with a laugh. “Then I thought about becoming a medical technician but there was a lot of physics involved with that and I wasn’t excited about that either.”

That put Fry’s attention firmly on choice No. 3 –physical therapy.

“I had a relative who was involved with the program as an advisor at that time, so I read up on it and decided that would be the route I followed,” she said. “And, physical therapists spend a lot of time working with orthopedic surgeons, so it was also a way to stay connected to my dad in a way which appealed to me as well.”

Fry, who spent the bulk of her career working at a children’s orthopedic clinic in the Detroit area, said that despite their only being together a short time – four years between schooling and the start of their careers – she and Oliver have stayed connected throughout the decades.

“Ann and I get together every year or two and remain great friends,” Fry said. “She lives in California, but her family has a cottage in Cadillac, so we still get to see each other.” Their visit to U-M’s 2022 homecoming game to celebrate the DPT program’s 70th anniversary was their first get-together in three years due to the pandemic. “And that bond is all because of the ‘Michigan experience’ we shared.”

Cindy Kincaid’s ‘shared’ experience with the DPT program is one derived from being both a graduate, 1968, and a former faculty member, 1980-2007. Following graduation, she embarked on a 12-year career as a practitioner with stops at a rehabilitation facility in Detroit, a county welfare hospital in Cleveland, and a general hospital in New England before returning to Ann Arbor.

“The University of Michigan has always been an exciting place to be, whether you’re in Ann Arbor or Flint. It just so happens that I got to experience both,” said Kincaid. “If you had told me while I was a student that I’d return as a faculty member one day, I wouldn’t have believed it.

“But to have the opportunity to share the practical knowledge that I had gained from 12 years in the field with others who were as dedicated to physical therapy as I was, was a unique opportunity, particularly at my alma mater. And to be at an institution that is always on the cutting edge of things in terms of research and medicine, it made it that much more desirable.”

Kincaid found herself on that cutting edge when the program transitioned to Flint and evolved from a certificate to a bachelor’s to a master’s, and finally, to a doctoral program.

“The program really grew upon arrival at UM-Flint and it was an incredible thing to watch,” Kincaid said. “And it came at the same time the field itself was growing. There are so many specialties now that one can go into whether it be geriatrics or pediatrics or working with cancer patients. There are just so many different directions that one can go, and change if the desire is there, but still remain in the field of physical therapy.” Much like the program will remain, perhaps for another 70 years, at UM-Flint.