Allison Turner - Natural Sciences Laboratory Coordinator
“The thing I try to impart to my science students over the course of four years is an understanding the scientific method, and what it means to ‘know’ something is true,” says Allison Turner. “We don’t really know that anything is true. But understanding how you find things out, how you think rationally, how you agree that you have enough evidence – it’s important to me that that come across in my interactions with students.”
As a laboratory coordinator at Marlboro, Allison teaches a diverse array of laboratory courses in biology, biochemistry and botany. Although she studied environmental science as an undergraduate, her graduate work was in the field of pharmacognosy[a branch of pharmacology that deals with drugs in their natural or crude state and with medicinal herbs or other plants], where she received a coveted grant from the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Allison’s PhD dissertation and subsequent research has focused on the medicinal properties of the use of cranberries for urinary tract infections. She has published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and the Journal of Natural Products.
In addition to teaching, Allison is actively involved in the college’s town meeting and performs emergency medicine and firefighting for the town of Marlboro. “My roots are here: I was born here, my father taught here and my mother was a student here,” she says.
“I really like the students at Marlboro. I think that they are some of the brightest students I’ve ever come across – they’re really interested in the work,” say Allison Turner. “They put a great deal of effort in their own learning process; it’s very inspiring to be around. It means it’s easier for me to teach and also means I can learn from them at the same time.”
B.S., University of California, Berkeley, 1983; Certificate, herbal medicine, California School of Herbal Studies, 1989, 1990, 1991; M.S., Marlboro College, 1999; PhD, University of Illinois, Chicago, 2006; Marlboro College 2003-