By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
For their performance in challenging honors seminars at NTCC in relation to their peers, two Presidential Scholars have recently won $100 checks. Texas Heritage National Bank Scholar, Jordan Dean Whelchel, who graduated this past May, was the sophomore who took all three honors seminars at NTCC, and ended with the highest GPA. Karla Jacqueline Fuentes won her award as an honors freshman, ranking number one in the Stat-Psych Honors Seminar taught this past spring by Dr. Karyn Skaar and Dr. Paula Wilhite.
An anonymous donor has funded the Eckman Awards in memory of the late Richard and Joan Eckman. Richard Eckman was a long-time inventor for Dresser Industries, a signature Texas oilfield corporation.
Both winners had an illustrious year at NTCC. Both presented scholarly work at a professional, and an honors association. Both were major contributors to NTCC’s Caldwell-Award-winning film on Barbara Conrad. Both won cash awards for written work; Whelchel for his essay on the history of chemistry, and Fuentes for her poem on rural life in Northeast Texas.
Whelchel, a resident of Hughes Springs, and a graduate of Daingerfield High School, will enter Texas A&M in College Station this fall in the chemical engineering program. Fuentes, the 2018 valedictorian of Winnsboro, will return to NTCC in the fall as a sophomore in biomedical studies.
