By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Clara Ramirez, NTCC’s pioneer winner of the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship in 2010, recently won a residency at Duke University as a primary-care Administrative Fellow. She is moving this summer from her home in Fort Worth to Durham, North Carolina to assume her new role.
Ramirez was a 2008 Mount Pleasant Valedictorian who came to NTCC as a Presidential Scholar. She won the McGraw-Hill Poster contest in 2009, presented at the National Collegiate Honors Council in Washington D. C., and published an article in Touchstone on the role of veterans in the integration of Mexican-Americans in Texas. After receiving her first Jack Kent Cooke scholarship, she matriculated with a free ride at Texas Christian University (TCU). She then won a second Jack Kent Cooke scholarship in 2015 that covered her Master’s degree in Health. For several years thereafter, she worked as a Project Coordinator for the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. In her capacity there, she played an important role in facilitating the ascendancy of another NTCC/Jack Kent Cooke alumna, Brenda Godoy, as Health Worker of Titus County.
As costs and financial modelling remain a preeminent aspect of health administration, Ramirez in 2021 decided to seek an MBA at the Neeley School of Business at TCU. Ramirez had hitherto not taken any business courses. But this past spring she not only received the degree, but a top Neeley Scholar Award for excellence with her research.
Ramirez is thrilled with the possibilities that await her work at Duke University. Recently she wrote in thanks for the “pivotal role that NTCC Honors” and the Honors Director, specifically, “played in helping me get to this point.” She noted that obtaining Jack Kent Cooke scholarships on the national level helped to motivate and center her efforts to obtain a position such as she currently has at Duke. She is thankful for NTCC and for honors here, for proving through her story and those other alumni that the community college is a smart option for individuals like herself.
