Vaneane Baynssaja is the 2024-25 Texas Heritage National Bank Scholar of Honors Northeast and the student representative of the Great Plains Honors Council. This past summer she won the prestigious $1,000 Yolando Romero Award of Phi Theta Kappa in Texas. In March of 2024 at College Station, she won a third-in-the-state Caldwell Award for her essay on this topic. Recently she has won, in addition, a Portia Gordon Award of the East Texas Historical Association (ETHA) for this work. She was a spring of 2024 winner of the Eckman Award for her outstanding erudition in honors course work. Bayna was a top 2023 graduate of Mount Pleasant High School (MPHS).
Estefani Garcia is a 2024 graduate of Mount Pleasant Highschool. At Mount Pleasant, she was a vice president of the student council and a member of Future Business Leaders of America, the NHS, the NTHS, and HOSA. She participated in Upward Bound, NTCC’s Phi Theta Kappa, and played on the soccer team. She won the 2024 Northeast Texas Image contest with her photograph of a rural field of bluebonnets.
Stephanie Hernandez was a top graduate of Mount Pleasant High School in 2024. For three years in a row, she went to state for art competitions. She was a member of the National Honor Society, the National Technical Honor Society, and the Texas Public Safety Association. She participated in UIL journalism and social studies. This past fall, she presented he work on Tejano murals at the meeting of the Walter Prescott Webb Association in San Antonio. She is a 2024 winner of the Cunningham Conceptualization Contest, and a 2025 Velazquez Award winner.
Andrew Higgins is a 2024 graduate of Mount Vernon High School. He was a top scorer in UIL math and science competitions, and the vice president of NHS. He has been a member of the Civil Air Patrol for four years and has attained the rank of captain. He has won several awards in agricultural mechanics as a member of Future Farmers of America. In 2023, though still in high school, he came in first in NTCC’s Bonnie Spencer competition for his essay on America in world affairs after the Spanish-American War. Higgins is a 2025 Velazquez Award winner, and an Eckman Award winner for having the highest GPA in the Fall 2024 HuMusic Seminar.
Skylar Hodson is the Russell Mowery Scholar of NTCC and the Dr. Mary Hood Scholar of Texas. She is the Director of the program’s current film, and has presented work relating to her role both in Kansas City at the NCHC and in Mount Pleasant. She was the star of the program’s film on Minnie Fisher Cunningham and the Texas Suffragettes. Hodson won a second-in-the-state Caldwell Award in the upper division last year in College Station for her work on the history of Texas Cinema. She also came in first at the Red River Symposium for this work, and second in the McGraw Hill Poster Contest. Her work most recently won a Portia Gordon Award of the East Texas Historical Association.
Alison Majors is the James and Elizabeth Whatley Scholar of Honors Northeast and a recent, Leaders of Promise winner. Majors’ work, “¡Vete de Tejas!”—recently won a Portia Gordon Award of the ETHA. She has featured this work in College Station, Stillwater, and the Mount Pleasant Library. Along with Skylar Hodson, Alison is the co-president of the Honors Student Council. She acts in the current film project of Honors Northeast as Lady Bird Johnson. Majors is a graduate of MPHS.
Monserrat Rivero-Sanchez is the Dr. Jerry Wesson Scholar of Honors Northeast. Last spring, she won an international office, the Division II Vice Presidency of Phi Theta Kappa, after serving as the Vice President of the Texas branch of Phi Theta Kappa. As a PTK leader Rivero has traveled extensively through the United States and addressed thousands of students. Rivero has also played major roles in the programs’ films, on the Texas suffragettes, and traveling preachers of early Texas. She presented work on this subject at the recent meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council in Kansas City in the fall of 2024. She was a graduate of MPHS.
Isabel Tresidder was homeschooled, and her family is from South Africa. She accepted an invitation last summer to work at the LBJ presidential library in Austin, and then wrote much of the script of the current film on oil and politics. She placed second in the 2024 Northeast Texas Poetry Contest with a work about feral hogs. She presented work which she has performed on Lyndon Johnson at the fall 2024 meeting of the Walter Prescott Webb Society in San Antonio, and recently won the Cunningham Conceptualization Contest for her facility with scholarly poetry. She is engaged in a continuing independent study course with Dr. McAllister on parasites in rodents in the fall of 2024. She is the winner of the 2024-2025 Dr. Charles Florio Award for her leadership in Biology, and Texas History, including her film work last summer.
Mary-Faith Wilson is the Gladys Winkle Scholar of Honors Northeast. In the spring of 2024 she won a first-place award in the Red River Symposium for her work on Alzheimer’s patients and music. In September, she chaired the NTCC panel on entrenched problems in modern Texas history at the ETHS which won the Portia Gordon Award. She is known as a preeminent writing tutor on campus, and has participated broadly in the English Club, Sigma Kappa Delta, and NTCC’s literary magazine, Lagniappe. Wilson has won both a Texas Star Award and a Leader of Promise. She was homeschooled and is from Gilmer. Recently she won the Eckman Award for having the highest seminar GPA in the BioTex experience.
