Jennifer Turley, PhD

Title: Brady Distinguished Professor of Nutrition
E-mail: jturley2@weber.edu

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow - National Cancer Institute
Ph.D. - University of Texas-Austin, Human Ecology - Nutrition Science
B.S - Arizona State University, Nutrition Science

Personal
I am originally from Fairbanks, Alaska. I absolutely love living in Utah for its milder climate yet spectacular mountainous beauty. My husband (John) and I love our 2 children and enjoy outdoor recreation, fitness, and eating healthy. We enjoy spending time with our son, Jonathan and daughter Jasmine and our Great Pyrenees dog Kali. We have been known to play original Christian music locally and on Mercy FM radio in Uganda Africa. John sings and plays the guitar while I play the keyboard, saxophone (alto, soprano, and tenor), clarinet, penny whistle, and pan flute). Here's a song to enjoy. If you enjoyed that, here's a link to more songs!

Teaching Philosophy
I love teaching nutrition. I strongly believe that the way you eat impacts your health both now and in the future. I try to create a teaching atmosphere that empowers students to learn the science of nutrition and integrate it into their daily lives to achieve overall wellbeing. The methods that I use to achieve this include:

To have clear learning objectives and direction for each class session and for the entire course.
To prepare myself fully to transfer current, accurate and relevant information to my students.
To hold students accountable for their learning but to provide the means for them to succeed in the class.
To be enthusiastic and creative in my teaching style. This involves using a combination of teaching techniques to capture the various interests and intellectual abilities of my students. Some of the teaching techniques that I use are: group activities, active learning lessons, lectures, discussions, demonstrations, models, figures, overheads, PowerPoint presentations, problem solving case studies, student presentations, videos, stories, and quotations.
To always look for ways to improve my teaching and my students learning by using self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, and student evaluation.

Professional Focus
In the area of Nutrition, my primary interest is to educate students on how to eat a healthy diet and be a healthy person. I am also intrigued by food system sustainability as well as the immune system, food allergies and pseudoallergies. It is my desire that people don't just eat to sustain life, but rather eat to prolong life and a high quality life at that. Since dietary practices and patterns are linked strongly to chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis, I aim to provide the most current reliable information related to diet and lifestyle factors to prevent such diseases. I also am interested in cultural differences in eating pattern and how this correlates to different epidemiological disease outcomes. Prior to WSU, I spent 8 years doing primary nutrition research studying the anti-cancer mechanisms of vitamin E on human cancer cells.

Teaching Assignments
Current

Science and Application of Human Nutrition (Nutr LS SUS 1020)
Nutrition in the Life Cycle (NUTR 2020)
Food Values, Diet Design and Health (Nutr 2320)
Multicultural Health and Nutrition (Nutr GLB 3420)
Current Issues in Nutrition (NUTR 4320)
Senior Seminar (NUTR CDEV 4990)

Past

Prenatal and Infant Nutrition (NUTR 2220)
Childhood and Adolescent Nutrition (NUTR 2420)
Nutrition and Health in the Older Adult (Nutr 3320)
Advanced Human Nutrition (NUTR 4440)
Foundations in Diet Therapy (NUTR 3220)
Foundations of Lifestyle Managment (PEP 2200)
Strength Training (PE 1080)

Professional Accomplishments
Awards

"Award of Recognition" Utah Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 2019.
"Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor Award" April, 2014.
“George and Beth Lowe Innovative Teaching Award” March 22, 2005.
“Exemplar of Technology Delivered Instruction Award" from the Utah System of Higher Education, May 2005.

Professional Service

I served as a Department Chair for 10 years at WSU. First, I was the Chair of the very large and interdisciplinary Department of Health Promotion & Human Performance (HPHP) from 2012-2015. I then chaired the reorganized Department of Athletic Training & Nutrition (ATN) from 2015-2019. I served as Chair of the reorganized Department of Exercise & Nutrition Sciences (ENS) from 2019-2022. I served as the Program Director for Nutrition Education from 2016-2019. During my time as department chair, I managed the Swenson Builing/Stromberg complex facilities, budgets, and scholarships, secured funding, worked through multiple building renovation projects, collaborated with multiple campus entities including athletics, campus recreation, continuing education, and dance, supervised and evaluated up to 20 faculty, six staff, and 70 adjunct instructors, scheduled undergraduate and graduate academic courses and physical activity courses each semester, managed multiple concurrent enrollment courses across three disciplines and trained 20+ high school instructors each semester, led multiple academic programs through external accreditiation, program reviews, and assessment reporting, and many other leadership duties.

I have and still do serve on numerous WSU committees: Here are some committee's I've worked on: Faculty Board of Review, Davis Academic Programs Committee, Moyes College of Education High Impact Educational Experiences Strategic Planning Committee, Academic Resources and Computing, Online Testing Steering Committee, Salary, Benefits, Budget, and Fiscal Planning, Affirmative Action Advisory Committee, Faculty Senate, Executive Committee, Curriculum & General Education Committee, Department, College, and University Ranking Tenure Evaluation Committees, General Education Improvement & Assessment & Revitalization Committees, Teaching & Learning Forum, Concurrent Enrollment Liaison, Leadership Council, Chairs Council, Search Committees (Dean, Faculty, & Staff), Vista Implementation Project Steering Committee member and eLearning Workstream (Co-Chair), Early Access Student Review Board, College of Education Curriculum Committee, Teaching and Learning Assessment Committee, Department faculty search committees, & NW Accreditation self-study committee (Chair).

I advise students, oversee senior project and BIS capstone projects and give community talks. I am a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND)

Scholarships: Publications and Professional Presentations

I've remained active in scholarly activities including scientific research. I have 22 teaching and education related publications, 12 research publications, and over 18 professional presentations. You can view a list of my presentations and publications by following this link.

Online Course Development and/or Revisions

Nutrition LS SUS 1020: Foundations of Nutrition
Nutrition 2020: Nutrition in the Life Cycle
Nutrition 2220: Prenatal and Infant Nutrition
Nutrition 2320: Food Values, Diet Design, and Health
Nutrition 2420: Childhood & Adolescent Nutrition
Nutrition 3220: Foundations of Diet Therapy
Nutrition 3320: Nutrition and Health in the Older Adult
Nutrition GLB 3420: Multicultural Health and Nutrition
Nutrition 4320: Current Issues in Nutrition
Nutrition 4440: Advanced Human Nutrition
Nutrition CDEV 4990: Senior Seminar