By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Jessica Velasquez, a 2016 NTCC graduate, and winner of two Jack Kent Cooke Scholarships, has just won an award in research from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Velasquez’s study was based on work she performed last summer at the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Training Program, an end-of-life care unit for cancer patients living in Puerto Rico. Dr. Andrew Yox, NTCC honors director was one of the references who wrote letters for Velasquez’s Puerto Rican internship last summer. The link for the release about Velasquez’s accomplishment by the AACR is available on the alumni page of the NTCC Honors website.
While a Presidential Scholar at NTCC, Velasquez published her first essay on agricultural transformation in Texas, and presented work at the Great Plains Honors Council, and the National Collegiate Honors Council.
Dr. Andrew Yox notes: “Velasquez has become a very versatile, fluent, up-and-coming scholar in medicine. She now has her name on several articles, involving T-cells, Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, and diseases of the white blood cells. She also won an opportunity to work out of Bonn, Germany as part of the Medicine Abroad Program, visiting museums, and hospitals, and researching the history of German medicine It has been fascinating, following her career. We thank Dr. Mary Hearron, Sid Hicks and many other local educators as well for playing formative roles as mentors, prefiguring her initial successes.”
Velasquez was a graduate of Mount Vernon High School. She was also the director of NTCC’s Caldwell-Award-Winning film of Governors Ma and Pa Ferguson of Texas.
