A moment worth waiting for for Centre student turned professor

Before Assistant Professor of Biology Christina Garcia was a member of the Centre College faculty, she was an excited senior preparing for a busy commencement weekend in 2005.

Earlier that year, she received the talent — or coin — that seniors later give during Honor Walk to recognize someone who made a significant impact on their lives.

Garcia, a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major, knew right away that she would honor Peggy Richey, Ewing T. Boles Professor of Biology and Biochemistry/Molecular Biology.

Garcia said she carefully placed the talent in a desk drawer for safekeeping, but when Honor Walk arrived, the coin was nowhere to be found. Until after Commencement, that is, when she discovered it while moving out of her residence hall… right where she had left it.

Garcia was preparing to start graduate school at Vanderbilt University, where she would go on to earn her doctorate in cancer biology. From there, she joined the Baylor College of Medicine as a postdoctoral researcher and was later a postdoctoral teaching scholar in the biotechnology program at North Carolina State University.

She returned to Centre in 2018 as an assistant professor of biology, becoming a colleague of the professor she so admired as a student.

“At the risk of sounding trite, I don’t think I’d be here today if it weren’t for Peggy Richey,” Garcia told colleagues during a year-end faculty meeting.

Richey was her advisor through all four years, offering guidance and dispensing some no-nonsense advice.

“Like the time she told me to stop taking naps because it was ruining my sleep schedule, or the time she basically said, ‘You’ll be fine,’ after I received a mid-term progress report in Macromolecules,” Garcia recalled. “It was also Peggy who encouraged me to apply for summer research internships … and led me ultimately to pursue a PhD.”

While at Vanderbilt, Garcia told a friend she was thinking about becoming a professor.  

“With Peggy in mind, I added, ‘The kind that’s really nice but writes really hard exams.’ To which my friend responded, ‘That’s the worst,’” Garcia said. “Still, this is something that I aspire to today.”

Throughout graduate school, her post-doc work and the start of her career, Garcia kept that Honor Walk coin.

As the 2024-25 school year wound down, Richey’s retirement drew near after 36 years with the College.

“Over the past few years, Peggy has slowly been passing the torch by giving me stuff,” Garcia said. “Earlier this term, she handed me a box for sending off pipettes to be repaired and calibrated and told me it was my job now.”

At Peggy Richey’s final faculty meeting before retirement, Christina Garcia decided it was time to give something back to Richey.

There, with their colleagues watching, she passed along that once-lost coin to honor the person who made a tremendous impact on her journey.

“I have the unique honor and privilege of giving my talent, exactly 20 years later, to Peggy,” Garcia announced. “Peggy, the BIO and BMB programs thank you profoundly for the last 36 years of your service. Thank you for your years of support and for helping to make Centre a great place to learn and to work. We love you and will miss you. We hope to see you at the Arboretum soon, in between your travel adventures.”