Turner, Samuel M.

I was born in Macon, Georgia, to parents of a rural Georgia background, neither of whom was a college graduate. Although not well educated and not well-off financially, the family, like many southern African Americans, had a long history of land ownership and relatives in rural areas with substantial farmland. This background of land ownership and family stability provided an atmosphere that fostered independence and upward striving. I attended the segregated schools of the deep South during elementary and high school, schools that, although segregated, were made up of talented African American teachers who provided an unusual nurturing and supportive environment for learning. I did not go directly to college, but instead enlisted in the United States Air Force, where I spent 4 years, one of which was in Thailand during the Vietnam War. My military career did not end there, as I later served as an Army Reserve Officer.

My college career began during military service, and it was my experience with a psychologist who was a former military officer, a Bataan Death March survivor named Grover C. Richards, at a tiny midwestern university in Texas, that fostered my interest in psychology. This professor was a dynamic instructor and ardent behaviorist whose ability to link unusual experiences to behavioral principles and theories was particularly appealing to me. After completing my military obligation, I entered Georgia State University, where I completed the BA degree.

I then started my graduate work at the University of Georgia, a program heavily (but not entirely) influenced by behavioral theory, with a model of training firmly rooted in the scientist-practitioner tradition and a strong integration of clinical and research activities. Influential faculty members in the Georgia program included Rex Forehand, Karen Calhoun, Benjamin Lahey, and Henry Earl Adams, my primary mentor. As a comajor in social psychology, my mentor was Abraham Tesser.

I was fortunate enough to complete internship training at the Mississippi Medical Center, where I was influenced by a highly talented, productive, and influential group of faculty members, as well as trainees. Among the faculty were David H. Barlow, Edward B. Blanchard, Leonard Epstein, Gene Abel, and Richard Eisler. It was there also where I met and was supervised and mentored by Michel Hersen.

Following the successful defense of my dissertation, literally the next day, my family and I left for Pittsburgh, where I would begin my faculty career at what would become one of the most productive psychiatric facilities in the world: Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC) of the University of[Page 609]Pittsburgh School of Medicine. There, I renewed my association with Michel Hersen and Leonard Epstein and began an association with many illustrious colleagues, including Alan Kazdin, Alan S. Bellack, and Rolf G. Jacob. Following several years of highly productive work with Michel Hersen and Alan Bellack in the area of social skills training for chronic schizophrenic patients, my interest in anxiety disorders solidified, and I began a highly productive research program in the anxiety disorders in collaboration with Deborah C. Beidel. This program of research has focused in particular on social anxiety disorder in children and adults as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder. As director of the Psychology Internship Program at WPIC, I was privileged to be associated with and contribute to the training of an unusually talented group of trainees that included Donald Williamson, Frank Andrasik, Melinda Stanley, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Cynthia Bulik, Michele Cooley, Angela Neal, and Deborah C. Beidel. Following my long tenure at WPIC, I was professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina for 7 years. In 1998, I became professor of psychology and director of clinical training at the University of Maryland.

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