Welcome Ms. Marlene Elwell!
With the 2025-2026 school year here, let's welcome Robert College's new English teacher, Marlene Elwell!
Ms. Elwell has had a long-term connection to Türkiye before teaching at RC. Before coming to Türkiye, she studied the country extensively while still living in her home state of California. She also enjoyed attending Turkish cultural events in the United States organized by the Turkish-American Association. She first visited Türkiye in March 1996 and again in June 1996. She returned to Türkiye in summer 2002 for the first of three summer intensive Turkish Language programs at Boğaziçi University (2002-2004). At the time, she was a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In September 2002, she was an exchange Ph.D student at Bilkent University, where she later enrolled as a political science doctoral student focusing on US-Turkish cooperative relations.
At Bilkent, she met the university's founder, Prof. İhsan Doğramacı, who admired Ms. Elwell for uniting people in the pursuit of improvement and innovation via education. He encouraged her to join Bilkent as a Faculty Academic English Program instructor since she had a master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of other Languages (TESOL) and previous higher education teaching experience. In September 2005, Ms. Elwell accepted the university's employment offer and worked at Bilkent for 20 years, teaching students at undergraduate, master, and doctoral levels. She also served as coordinator for many courses during her tenure at Bilkent and was an administrator there, leading an international team of educators for eight years.
She adapted to Turkish culture in one of the best ways possible: by traveling. She has explored all 81 of Türkiye's provinces to understand the country's people, traditions, geography, and much more. She had adapted to the Turkish community so well that her Turkish friends even gave her local nicknames, Mahmure and Marşen.
Ms. Elwell fondly recalls being a matchmaker for many of her friends in Türkiye as well as hosting a traditional Henna party for a British friend who married a Turkish friend of hers. She feels at home in Türkiye, having integrated into Turkish culture and society and being accepted by Turks in this beautiful country.
She greatly respects Türkiye's scientific endeavors. Ms. Elwell is glad to have supported Turkish scientific advancement as a test subject for a non-RNA COVID-19 vaccine trial that was developed by Turkish scientists Prof. İhsan Gürel and Prof. Mayda Gürsel.
Ms. Elwell shared that she became a teacher because she is passionate about helping others on their learning journeys. She described her teaching style as "aiming to provide principled, caring, dedicated, and customized education." This is also one of the reasons why she chose RC. She had long known about our school; she told herself that if she ever decided to stop teaching at the university level but remain working in the education sector in Turkiye, she would only want to teach at RC.
Her first impression of RC was that the school had profound respect for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He is the primary reason why Ms. Elwell came to Türkiye, as she also has sincere respect for Atatürk, particularly for his advocacy role in education.
Ms. Elwell has an exciting life. She loves traveling, having visited 47 countries thus far. She has many interesting hobbies: sailing, photography, participating in sociocultural activities, hiking, and much more. But there is one that I especially want to mention: Poetry. One of her poems, written in 2003, is titled "Gör" ("See" in English). She was inspired to write the poem in Turkish and later in English when observing people at a Boğaziçi University graduation ceremony.
Besides continuing to write poetry, she wants to write books and articles that promote Türkiye's thermal, health, food, and sustainable tourism. She also plans to pursue her photography hobby to visually share Türkiye's many beauties. Ms. Elwell enjoys being in nature and by the sea in Dalaman, Muğla, when on vacation; she might consider moving there when she retires many years from now.
As students, we think that Ms. Elwell is a great addition to RC, and we are happy to have her with us. She says, "If you ever spot me on campus, you're more than welcome to come over and talk!"
