With the merger of UTB and the University of Texas Pan American (UTPA) in 2014, García did not apply for the presidency of the newly created school.

In March 2016, García was named a senior advisor to the chancellor of the University of Texas System.

Her father was from Mexico and worked as a janitor and then customs representative for Pan American World Airways; her mother died when she was a child.

[2] She joined the TSC faculty in 1972, taking a leave of absence two years later to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.

[7] By March 2016, the University of Texas System had decided to move away from an Americas Institute housed at a single center, and García was named a senior advisor to the system chancellor on matters of community, national and global engagement.