Starting with a CGE interprofessional grant in 2014, Leslie B. Glickman, PT, PhD has developed a deep and long-lasting collaboration with colleagues in Malawi. She is currently working on curriculum with the Physiotherapy Programme at the University of Malawi, College of Medicine and just published a textbook with Malawian colleagues and others called, “Malawi: Its History, Culture, Environment, Education, and Healthcare” with Nova Science Publishers.

Glickman retired from full-time employment in 2015 as Assistant Professor in the University of Maryland, School of Medicine’s Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science and is now a visiting assistant professor collaborating on global activities and research.

“Through luck and my international connections, I was able to assemble a large group of professionals to help create a textbook with a proud swath of historical and current cultural information about Malawi,” Glickman said.

The textbook was drafted and nearly completed in six months, thanks to her prolonged pandemic lock-down.

Glickman’s interest in international education “came from many years of traveling the globe with my husband and alone, and long-time membership in Health Volunteers Overseas.”

Health Volunteers Overseas provides the expertise of physical therapists and orthopedic surgeons from the U.S. with member programs around the world for short-term clinical and teaching projects. Her first international professional project in 2010 was through that organization for teaching and administrative consultation with the Physiotherapy Programme in Suriname.

“My interests developed and expanded thereafter, when I met Virginia Rowthorn, Jody Olsen, Miriam Laufer and other UMB faculty who were creating a steering committee to focus on global partnerships,” Glickman said. “I offered my limited knowledge and experience. They created the opportunities, expanded my knowledge, and provided a tool bag of educational resources, grant funding and international contacts in Malawi.”

The Center for Global Engagement provides Faculty Interprofessional Global Health Grants to faculty who develop an international project that includes at least two students from more than one professional school.

Glickman received Faculty Interprofessional Global Health& Educational Grants in 2014 and 2015 to take interprofessional groups of UMB students from medicine, nursing, and social work to Malawi. They mentored staff at the Kachere Rehabilitation Centre in Blantyre, studied the community reintegration experiences of people discharged from the rehab facility, conducted research, learned about the culture, and taught physiotherapy colleagues at Kachere.

“We were interested in how they (the clients) were coping with reintegration and how they figured out how to do the things they learned in an environment not set up for their physical and mental needs,” Glickman said.

Everything is about relationships with people and establishing a workable collaboration. Glickman’s more recent collaborative focus has been on creating a transitional curriculum for the Physiotherapy Programme at the University of Malawi, College of Medicine.

“There are so many international programs that are ‘for’ the traveler who wants to explore a country and get excited about the glamour of travel. But when you step back, ask what’s in it for them?” Glickman said. “My philosophy is share your knowledge before you request something of others. What can we do together, rather what can you do for me?”

The textbook is available in hard copy and as an e-book from Nova Science Publishers.