Honors Northeast, the honors program of Northeast Texas Community College, recently continued its tradition of success among its peers in the Great Plains Honors Council with the poster awards of William Jones and Gabriela Quezada.†Jones won the behavioral science division of those with fewer than 60 hours of college completed, while the NTCC sophomore, Gabriela Quezada, won in the professional division for those with more than 60 hours.††NTCC won two of the six poster awards given at the meeting.†††Jones and Quezada both were awarded $50 prizes.
Some 50 honors colleges and programs, from Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas were represented at the conference earlier this month, hosted this year by the Honors Programs of John Brown University and Oral Roberts in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.††The conference spotlights student research, and this year granted a total of twelve awards for the two categories.
?William Jones has been an amazingly proactive scholar for us,? Honors Program Director, Dr. Andrew Yox, said. ?I would contend that we will be hearing more about his meticulous research and unique conceptualizing skills.†Gabriela Quezada, came to us from El Salvador and learned calculus and modern history about as fast as she learned English.†She is a also wonderful artist.?
Jones? work featured the case of Dutch Luman, a ?Texas Quasi-Criminal? whose life informs the current debate on mass incarceration.††Jones argued that a century ago, the state of Texas found a way to distinguish a vigilante from an intractable criminal, and utilize Luman as a top law-enforcement officer.††Quezada worked assiduously through a file on the Texas Centennial of 1936 that was donated to Honors Northeast by Margaret Durham of Mount Pleasant, a former teacher.††Quezada, using a study in her freshman year of El Salvador?s leadership as a baseline, argued that Dallas businessmen engaged in an ?identity heist? in 1936, an effort to edit the Texas past. The controversial business elite of Dallas who later inspired the prime-time soap opera of that name, consciously trivialized the state?s Hispanic, early Texican, and populist traditions.
William, homeschooled in Mount Pleasant, is the son of Geri and Craig Jones.††He was a major force behind this year?s award-winning honors film on the Fergusons of Texas.††Gabriela is the daughter of Elba and Emelic Quezada of Pittsburg.††She was the 2014-15 Cypress Bank Scholar of Honors Northeast.
Eight scholars and Northeast professors Drs. Mary Hearron and Yox attended the conference representing NTCC.††NTCC Boe nominees Emmalea Shaw, and Jessica Velazquez gave oral presentations of their work on integration in Northeast Texas, and anesthesia in the Civil War.††Shaw was a recent third-place Caldwell Award winner, and Velazquez, a recent Student of the Year semi-finalist for the National Collegiate Honors Council.†Other NTCC scholars presented their work in poster format.††This included Caldwell winners Melody Mott, and Hector Zuniga as well as Cailee Davidson, and Kassandra Martinez.
The trip to Siloam Springs came with excursions to some surprisingly upbeat sites in northwest Arkansas--Bentonville, the new Cooper Chapel, and Crystal Bridges art museum, funded by the Walton family
NTCC?s student presenters at the GPHC will also be featured locally at the upcoming McGraw Hill Poster contest at the Whatley Center April 29.†For more information on how to compete, observe, or judge this contest, contact Andrew Yox at†ayox@ntcc.edu†or 434-8229.
