A bookshelf sits in the corner of the room, framed by the blank white walls around it. The board is neatly erased, and typing softly at her desk, Dr. Julie Turchin relaxes with a cool demeanor, preparing her lesson plans for the next week. Dr. Turchin, who started at Harker on Oct. 1, has begun to ease into her new role on campus.

“It’s like drinking water from a fire hose but exciting at the same time. I didn’t anticipate that I’d be leaving one job on Friday and getting a new job on Monday, but I like to be busy, and I like to learn new things. Just being in that learning mode again gives me a lot of empathy for my students. Learning is exhausting and fun and interesting, all at the same time,” Dr. Turchin said.

Dr. Turchin, a Boston native, was fascinated by psychology since she took her first class on it as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College.

“I love people. And I really like trying to understand how people work, taking others’ perspectives, and here was a discipline that was all focused on explaining how people tick,” said Dr. Turchin, “To me, how our brain works is fascinating. How we interact with others and how the way that we view the world changes our interactions with others is endlessly fascinating.”

After graduating from Stanford with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, Dr. Turchin has continued to apply her education to various fields. Previously working as an organizational psychologist, she taught leadership development and helped navigate workplace conflicts.

Additionally, she has utilized developmental psychology in understanding her children; she hopes to bring this experience to her teaching and interact on an interpersonal level with her students.

“I feel like there is psychology in everything we do, whether it’s how you’re understanding your future children or your little siblings, how you understand all of the politics as it is today or how you balance a healthy life with what psychology has taught us about health and wellbeing,” Dr. Turchin said.

Out of the classroom, Dr. Turchin coaches her eight-year-old daughter’s soccer team, despite only having played soccer during sixth grade. Now on her third year of coaching, Dr. Turchin has evolved her coaching style to help build the characters of the girls on her team.

“I’m not teaching [the girls] soccer as much as I’m teaching them life lessons. There’s one kid on the team who should be playing competitively, who I introduced to my daughter’s competitive coach. I pulled her aside at the beginning of the season and told her that she was going to be working on her frustration tolerance and her leadership. [With] other kids, I focus on sportsmanship or participation,” Dr. Turchin said.

Dr. Turchin also learns from the girls and hopes to implement those lessons in the classroom.

“[The girls] have energy. They also have this resilience where they don’t remember some things from one day to the next. Their spirits are not suppressible. Even if they lost the game 5-2, it’s snack time. That’s what really matters,” Dr. Turchin said. “The best coaching helps people figure out their own problems. The best teaching does the same thing, too. Repeating stuff to people isn’t as good as if they figure it out themselves.”

As Dr. Turchin settles in at Harker, she hopes to bond with the rest of the faculty and students.

“I have an open door; I love to not just only meet my students, but anyone who wants to swing by office hours, and anyone who wants to learn more about psychology or more about me, is always welcome,” Dr. Turchin said.