When Dean of the College Lee Pelton needed someone to chair a task force he created to comprehensively evaluate the problems alcohol causes at Dartmouth, it was only natural that Pelton chose Dr. Jack Turco.
Turco, who has been the director of Health Services at the College for more than 13 years, has studied alcohol and its effects for more than 20 years. His studies even led him to the former Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
But Turco is more than just the head of Dick's House and he does more than just study alcohol. A more complete look reveals that Turco is also a devoted doctor, researcher, consultant, husband, father, coach and community service volunteer.
Dr. Michael Sateia, who met Turco when the two interned at the College together in 1974, said Turco is one of the most personable and well-respected physicians in the Upper Valley.
"I think he has particularly commanded respect for the work he's done with younger people," Sateia said of his friend of 20 years. "That is evidenced not only in his work with Dartmouth students but it has also been demonstrated at the high school level as a coach and role model."
Turco came to Dartmouth in 1974 from Columbia University Medical School to do an internship in internal medicine and in 1977 he began a fellowship in endocrinology. Turco started working part-time for Health Services in 1979. Three years later, the then-director of Health Services retired, and Turco applied for and received the director's position.
But he retained his desire to practice medicine, and to this day, Turco still has two distinct jobs: he is an endocrinologist at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the director of College Health Services.
Health Issues
As Health Services director, Turco handles various medical issues within the College, but perhaps none as pervasive as alcohol.
Turco said the medical field has made great gains in the past 15 to 20 years in recognizing alcohol abuse as a medical problem and not just a discipline problem.
"I think in the mid-1970s we started to recognize that it is also a medical issue and that we had people with a real medical problem --alcoholism," Turco said. "Prior to the 1970s, I think people were loath to call a college student an alcoholic -- it was seen as a normal transition people go through."
Turco studied the problems of alcohol abuse first-hand when he joined a U.S. government-sponsored task force on a research trip to the former Soviet Union in 1985.
Turco said in the mid-1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union started to open up and they each agreed to send teams to one another's countries to study common problems. Turco said the first problem they chose to study was alcohol abuse.
At the College, Turco continues to deal with alcohol-related issues on a frequent basis, especially when intoxicated students are admitted to Dick's House. Turco said he has become very conscious that alcohol creates a lot of "negative outcomes," including unplanned pregnancy, date rape, injuries and academic problems.
One of the ways to help prevent such negative outcomes, Turco said, is by educating students about the consequences of alcohol abuse.
"Unfortunately, all the education in the world poured into the head of a very bright Dartmouth student, if you have four or five beers then you're just unable to use that information and some incredibly poor decisions are made," he said.
"We're trying to talk about the medical realities," Turco said. "We want to make sure people understand the medical consequences that result so people are responsible for their actions."
Sports and medicine
Turco is intimately involved with health issues now, but as an undergraduate, he was not even sure if he wanted to pursue a medical career.
After attending public high school in Melrose, Mass., he went to Phillips Andover Academy and then attended Harvard University, where he graduated as a biology major in 1970 before going to Columbia Medical School.
"I didn't know I wanted to go into the medical field at first when I went to Harvard," Turco said. He said although there were no physicians in his family, he was somewhat drawn to sciences, possibly because of the medical aspects of athletics.
Turco began as a three-sport varsity athlete at Harvard, playing hockey, baseball and football. His last two years, he limited himself to hockey and baseball, and he achieved great success in both sports.
Although he was never the captain of the varsity team, he did captain the freshman hockey team his first year at Harvard. His other three years, he helped the Crimson skate to two second-place Ivy League finishes and one third-place finish, in an era when college hockey was dominated by a Cornell University dynasty.
Dartmouth Men's Hockey Coach Roger Demment, who first met Turco when he was a sophomore on the Yale hockey team and Turco was a senior at Harvard, was quick to point out that Turco was the only player in college hockey to ever score a hat trick against Cornell goalie Ken Dryden.
Dryden dominated college hockey as a three-year varsity starter, and his career 1.60 goals against average with the Big Red is a record that may never be broken.
Turco also experienced great success as a baseball player. During his time at Harvard, the Crimson baseball team made the College World Series and ended up playing for the championship.
Turco's love of sports is still with him, as he is active in coaching youth groups, particularly youth hockey and youth baseball.
Although Turco is busy with coaching and his work at the DHMC and the College, he also finds time to volunteer some of his time at the Good Neighbor Health Clinic, a free medical clinic in White River Junction, Vt.
Turco lives in Vermont with his wife, Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco, and their three children. Mary Turco said the family very much loves living in the Upper Valley and being affiliated with Dartmouth.
She said she enjoys working at the same institution as her husband, and Jack agreed. "It's nice to be able to have lunch with your wife every once in a while," he said.
