Note: Due to COVID-19, the poster contest will be held online. See below for full details.
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
The 12th annual McGraw-Hill Poster Contest is set for Friday, May 1, starting at 9:00 a.m. This contest has recognized and rewarded creative student scholarship in Northeast Texas since 2009. Area high school seniors, college and university students are welcome to compete. Prizes range from $100 for fourth place to $400 for first place. The First-Place winner will also receive a special $175 certificate from McGraw Hill. Community judges will determine a project’s contribution to scholarship, the persuasiveness of its author, and the quality of the overall presentation.
The event is beholden to a Whatley Enhancement Grant, NTCC benefactors, the McGraw-Hill Education Corporation, and the McGraw-Hill representative Casey Slaght in St. Louis, who has facilitated this invaluable connection between a preeminent education corporation and our NTCC students since 2017.
The 2020 contest, of course, will need to proceed differently because of the present need to maintain social distances. Contestants this year will need to send an Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) of their poster to NTCC’s Title V Honors and Phi Theta Kappa Coordinator, Andrea Reyes at areyes@ntcc.edu. They will also need to upload a five-minute spoken presentation of their original scholarly idea on to YouTube (the poster, submitted as a PDF, need not be in the background). Students wishing to enter the contest should check with Andrea Reyes, or Dr. Andrew Yox at ayox@ntcc.edu before noon on Wednesday, April 29 so they can upload their presentation to the correct Brand Channel of YouTube for viewing.
NTCC Presidential Scholars have dominated the contest in recent years. In 2011, a non-honors NTCC history major, Jared Adams, won first place. Since then, Isaac Griffin (2012), Stephani Calderon (2013), Noah Griffin (2014) Kayleah Cumpian (2015), Cassia Rose (2016), William Jones (2017), Matthew Chambers (2018) and Olivia Griffin (2019) have won the top prizes. Remarkably, three of the winners have been from the same Griffin family of Pittsburg, the children of Dr. Steven and Joy Griffin. Four of the recent winners were also able to leverage their McGraw-Hill victories for extremely competitive national awards such as the Guistwhite, the Jack Kent Cooke award, and the All-USA Team.
The twenty scholars of Honors Northeast will compete. Other students wishing to enter the contest should realize that the contest is a test of excellence in research. Expertise in a certain area rather than mere erudition is the goal. The winners will be announced the following week, and checks and certificates sent by mail.
Anyone wishing to participate as a community judge should contact Dr. Yox at ayox@ntcc.edu or 903-434-8229. The winners of previous poster contests and a new video to help judges better prepare for the event can be found at www.ntcc.edu/honorsposters.
