For Marcia M. Turner '97, being selected Miss Massachusetts last year meant more than appearing on nationwide television and reaching instant celebrity status.

During her senior year of high school in Wenatchee, Wash., someone suggested Turner enter a beauty pageant. She says she declined, as she had an image of the typical beauty pageant contestant--and knew she didn't quite fit it.

In 1995, as a Lowell House junior, she decided she'd enter the Miss Massachusetts pageant, promoting a new vision for the contest itself.

It would not be "an ideal of youth and beauty, but a commitment of hard work" that would stress the importance of education, says Turner, who herself works with Boston Partners in Education.

"All of the doors that have been opened are because of my education. And that was because a lot of volunteers helped me along the way. I want to make people aware of where that got me, so they might be encouraged to do the same," she says.

Turner won the Miss Massachusetts contest and placed among the top 10 in the Miss America contest, which was broadcast live across America from Atlantic City, N.J., last September. During her term, she juggled her pageant responsibilities with a full course load.

The Government concentrator also co-chaired her house committee and gave campus tours with the Crimson Key Society.

Turner made more than 150 appearances in fairs, festivals and parades, sometimes touring four days each week. She accommodated her schedule by booking "a lot of seminars" at Harvard.

"There were some days with solid classes, but I had a good four days without classes. I had a business manager who scheduled events for me and she knew which days were school days," she says.

"Even dressing up four days a week can get draining," she adds.

Before entering a local pageant in Spring 1995, her only pageant experience was representing her hometown in a spring festival during high school.

Turner took runner-up in that first pageant and afterwards ran into a woman who said she had potential. She received pointers over the telephone from this woman, Turner says, which ultimately helped her take first place at her next local pageant.

"Then I went to the [Massachusetts] state pageant and ended up winning," Turner says. "I was pretty shocked. I was a pageant novice, and all I had to go on was what this woman had discussed with me."

Turner says she entered the contest because she was "curious, but in addition to that, I was somewhat challenged. I was always disciplined in my piano practice and disciplined in school."

Winning the Miss Massachusetts title was tough. But regular piano lessons at the New England Conservatory and 90-minute daily workouts between June and September with a personal trainer were no piece of cake either.