Lauren Root – Features Editor 

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Deborah Nicoll-Griffith, class of ’81, where we talked about all things Bishop’s. Deborah, a Pointe-Claire (Montreal) native, spent four years on campus and graduated with an honours degree in Biochemistry. 

Image courtesy of Dr. Deborah Nicoll-Griffith

While originally coming from Montreal, Deborah travelled a long way to study at Bishop’s. In her 11th-grade year, Deborah’s family moved to Indonesia due to her father’s job. For the entirety of her grade 12 year, Deborah completed correspondence school from Saskatchewan, which involved a lot of mailed lessons. It was shocking for me to hear about how Deborah completed high school, and we both agreed that Zoom would have been very helpful back then. 

Deborah’s mother attended Bishop’s in the 1950s for a year before starting nursing school. Loving her experience, Deborah’s mother heavily encouraged Deborah to attend Bishop’s, wanting a similar experience for her daughter. Coming to Bishop’s straight from Indonesia, Deborah was considered an out-of-province student, and her entire family was still overseas. The small community at Bishop’s helped Deborah feel safe, and she liked the vibe of the university. 

While at Bishop’s, Deborah was a member of the Chemistry club, helped out in a theatre production, and was even elected to be on the Academic Affairs Committee, where she helped adjudicate students who had failed classes and determine whether or not they should be reestablished. Deborah’s time at Bishop’s was extremely academically impressive. She won the Governor General’s Award, as well as winning an additional five awards at graduation, and ended up graduating at the top of her class. 

After graduating from Bishop’s in 1981, she went directly to a PhD program in organic chemistry at the University of British Columbia, which she completed in 1986. After graduating from UBC, she went on to complete a post-doc at the University of Toronto in pharmaceutical sciences. She also completed an additional post-doc, which was an industrial post-doc where she held a research position in a pharmaceutical contract research lab.

In September of 1988, Deborah joined Merck-Frosst, which is a pharmaceutical company located not far from where she grew up in Montreal. She always knew she wanted to get into pharmaceuticals, and Merck-Frosst had a strong research center, so it was a perfect fit. 

Deborah worked at Merck-Frosst for over 25 years, spending 19 years in Montreal before being relocated to Hoboken, New Jersey, for six years.

Around 2013, Deborah was offered early retirement, and so she moved back to Montreal and has been enjoying her retirement ever since. To help fill her time, Deborah has done plenty of professional volunteer work. 

Looking back at her Bishop’s experience, Deborah believes that the liberal arts education allowed her to become more interdisciplinary, which greatly helped her in her career. The class sizes and environment at Bishop’s helped her gain the confidence in her academic career to move forward and find success elsewhere, and she carried this confidence into the workforce. 

Deborah has always stayed connected to Bishop’s. One of her closest friends is someone she met in the Biochemistry department on campus.

In 2021, Deborah moved back to Sherbrooke. Coming back to Bishop’s, Deborah has been welcomed with open arms, and said she feels like she belongs within the community, which is something she greatly treasures. 

Thank you, Deborah, for taking the time to share your Bishop’s experience, your experiences, and insight are truly inspirational to students!