The Ninth Annual Northeast Texas Poetry Reading†will be held in the foyer of the Whatley Center for the Performing Arts at Northeast Texas Community College on Friday, Sept. 2 at 11 a.m. The reading will feature two speakers with broad historical interests in our region.

The scholars of Honors Northeast completed filming their fifth feature-length movie last week in Nacogdoches.†The subject of this year?s film was the end of the Texas Cherokee and the transformation of Sam Houston. The project was researched, written, directed, acted and produced by students in the Northeast Texas Community College honors program with the support of faculty, staff and community members.

Texas Heritage National Bank recently presented a Presidential Scholarship to Emmalea Shaw, a sophomore at Northeast Texas Community College.†The gift will cover Shaw?s academic expenses at NTCC for the 2016-2017 academic year.†This is the first privately-funded†gift of its kind†that Honors Northeast has received.

Shaw had a stellar first year at NTCC. She won a third-place $150 Caldwell Award from the State of Texas, and a $200 poetry award.

For the ninth consecutive year, Cypress Bank has presented a MacBook laptop for the use of Northeast Texas Community College honors students. This year?s recipient, Chesney Michael Davis, graduated third in his class from Pittsburg High School.

Northeast Texas Community College and Honors Northeast†recently†announced a call for original poems to enter the ninth†annual Northeast Texas Poetry Contest. The judges will be looking for poems that can accent or enliven our sense of the surroundings, people, the culture, and/or the history of Northeast Texas. Adult winners will take home $200 for first place and $50 for second place. Full-time student winners will receive $400 for first place, $300 for second, $200 for third, and $100 for fourth. All ages are welcome to enter the contest. Any genre of poem, and at any length, can compete.

Northeast Texas Community College Presidential Scholars, Jessica Velazquez of Mount Vernon and Angelica Fuentes of Mount Pleasant were recently awarded Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarships. These prestigious awards cover up to $40,000†annually at a university of the student?s choice for up to three†years. Only†75 students were selected from more than 2,000 top applicants in a very competitive process for this national honor.

?Each year†I am impressed by our students? successes.

Kassandra V. Martinez, a Northeast Texas Community College Honors Scholar, and Tanika Santos, a member of the NTCC Women?s Soccer Team have become the first winners of the Bonnie Spencer Awards for superior essays in history.† Spencer, an alumna of Northeast, and the leader of NTCC?s first history club in 2003, established the fund that awards the prizes. She also read the submissions, and helped select the winners.

Northeast Texas Community College held its ninth†annual McGraw-Hill Poster contest Friday, April 29. The event was held in the foyer of the Whatley Center for the Performing Arts and featured research by 20 of NTCC?s most decorated scholars. The contest has become an annual test of creative research in Northeast Texas, funded in part by the McGraw-Hill Corporation, and judged by friends of the college, and Honors Northeast.

Northeast Texas Community College student William Austin Jones was recently named the winner of the 2015-2016 Chitsey Award, granted annually to the student of Honors Northeast who most exceeded expectations. Jones has impressed all four of the first-year honors seminar professors for his proactive academic work, and commitment to excellence. He was the winner of the freshman-sophomore division of the Great Plains Honors Council poster contest in the Behavioral Sciences for his poster on quasi-criminality.