For their performance in challenging honors courses at NTCC in relation to their peers, two Presidential Scholars will win $100 checks. NTCC’s Dr. Jerry Wesson Scholar, Verania Leyva Garcia, who finished this past May, was the sophomore who took all twenty-one hours of requisite honors courses, including some rigorous special courses under Dr. Drew Murphy in chemistry, and ended with the highest GPA. Katelyn Marie Cox won her award as an honors freshman, ranking number one in the Stat-Psych Honors Seminar taught this past spring by Dr. Karyn Skaar and Dr. Paula Wilhite.
Both winners have had illustrious years at NTCC. Both have won past Eckman Awards as well as State of Texas Caldwell Awards. Both have received acceptances to present at the Great Plains Honors Council, and the National Collegiate Honors Council.
“It has been exciting,” notes Honors Director, Dr. Andrew Yox, “to note just how consistently brilliant these two scholars have been. In course after course, Verania Leyva, the 2018 Mount Pleasant Salutatorian, and Katelyn Cox, the daughter of a Tanzania missionary have set the pace, and their signal successes have brought acclaim to our college.”
An anonymous donor has funded now sixteen Eckman Awards at NTCC in memory of the late Richard and Joan Eckman. Richard Eckman was a long-time inventor for Dresser Industries, a signature Texas oilfield corporation. Many NTCC Eckman Award winners such as Matthew Chambers (2017, 2018), Chesney Davis (2017), and Brenda Godoy (2016), have obtained excellent transfers. Quite recently, 2019 Eckman winner, Jordan Whelchel, won a full-ride offer to Rice University.
Leyva-Garcia is the daughter of Crispin, and Yadira of Mount Pleasant. Cox is the daughter of Richard and Barbara of Mount Vernon.
