By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
For NTCC Honors Students, scholarship is a key to scholarships. In her first year at NTCC, Neida Perez modeled and led a successful cohort in the BioTex Seminar, both in coursework erudition, and research. “At a time last October when half of our seminar desperately needed a role model,” noted history professor, Dr. Andrew Yox, Neida Perez was conceptualizing her answers to the big questions of her research as well as anyone I can remember. She was brilliant, and yet unassuming. She was excellent and consistent. Her work surpassed many salutatorians and valedictorians we have been favored to have in honors here. And in this particular case, other students were soon emulating her achievements. We ended the semester with some very excellent projects in biology and Texas history.”
In her first semester at NTCC, Perez has been a model in other ways. She has participated winsomely and graciously with other projects. She acted in the Honors Northeast film last August on the Texas Suffragettes, helped present the trailer of the film in Nacogdoches at the fall Walter Prescott Webb Meeting in October, helped with NTCC’s first TAFE chapter, the Texas Association of Future Educators, and enabled a research trip to Sulphur Springs in November so that she and her peer in honors, Alyssa Ochoa, could explore topics of mutual interest at the Southwest Dairy Museum.
A single anonymous donor has supplied most of the $200 yearly leadership awards. Dr. Charles Florio served as President of NTCC for thirteen years, from 1995 to 2008. During his tenure, enrollments, building, credentials of the faculty, and the stature of the college showed a steady increase. He now lives in Fort Worth, with his wife, Sue Lynn.
Neida is the daughter of Maria Ana and Luciano Perez, and a graduate of Mount Pleasant High School. Previous winners of the Florio Leadership Award include: Brian Ramirez (2021), Carolina-Alcocer Salas (2020), Jacob Lambie (2019), and Rhylie Anderson (2018).
