Dr. Stephanie Toering Peters

Dr. Richard L. and Sandra K. Wahl Professorship in Biology

More about Dr. Stephanie Toering Peters

The Dr. Richard L. and Sandra K. Wahl Professorship in Biology

Dr. Stephanie Toering Peters earned a B.S. in chemistry from Hope College and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University. As chair of the Department of Biology, she works to advance the environmental science, neuroscience, and public health programs. She joined the Wartburg College faculty in 2005.

As an undergraduate student, Toering Peters researched DNA repair and studied the plant-induced conversion of 4-nitro-o-phenylenediamine to a mutagenic compound. At Stanford, her thesis in the genetic and biochemical analysis of Drosophila Sprouty, an inhibitor of growth factor signal transduction, was supported by the National Science Foundation. She also led discussion groups, coordinated presentations and seminars, and mentored minority undergraduate participants in the biomedical research summer program at Stanford University.

In 2011, Toering Peters served as a FUTURE in Biomedicine Fellow at the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, where she worked with a colleague to establish a locomotion assay for animals with defects in synaptic homeostasis at the neuromuscular junction. In 2014, she continued this work as a senior fellow.

At Wartburg, her research includes the role of Dgk in locomotion, neurotransmission, and synaptic homeostasis; the function of Drosophila Cc, the homolog to human Prohibitin; and supervision of student research groups. She advises pre-medical, pre-dental, pre-optometry, and pre-nursing students, and maintains Wartburg’s partnership with Allen College.

Toering Peters enjoys gardening and playing ice hockey. Her husband, Scott, is a professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. They have two daughters, Abby and Kate.

The Dr. Richard L. and Sandra K. Wahl Professorship in Biology was established in 2019 with a gift from Richard ’74 and Sandy Wahl to support the sciences. Richard is an internationally-recognized physician scientist and recipient of an alumni citation and honorary degree from Wartburg College. He is director of the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Sandy is an accomplished math educator.