Pictured: Andrew Higgins and Mary-Faith Wilson
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
For their performance in the fall of 2024 in honors at NTCC in relation to their peers, two Presidential Scholars have won $100 checks. Sophomore Mary-Faith Wilson, the college’s Gladys Winkle Scholar, came out ahead among the scholars enrolled in the BioTex fall honors seminar. Among the students in the HuMusic Seminar, Andrew Thomas Higgins won the honor among those students taking both sides of that seminar.
“The Eckman winners for the fall of 2024 represent a kind NTCC exceptionalism which we are so grateful for over the years. There is no easy explanation for these outcomes. Despite our location, or perhaps because of it, we receive two-four highly gifted, ultra-assiduous students each year. Mary Faith Wilson and Andrew Higgins are classic examples of this phenomena,” noted Honors Director, Dr. Andrew P. Yox.
The bulk of scholarly student achievement at NTCC on the regional level comes from three interdisciplinary seminars, lasting six to seven hours each semester. A Humanities and Music Appreciation interchange, and a Biology, Texas History combination constitute the two fall seminars, and a Psychology-General Chemistry II seminar occurs in the spring.
Higgins and Wilson were not only the champions this past semester in classroom erudition. Each wrote the most highly graded works of research in their respective seminars, and both will represent NTCC’s hopes for Boe Awards this year at the meeting of the Great Plains Honors Council (GPHC) in Denton in March. About six Boe Awards are conferred each year by the GPHC for outstanding student essays. The GPHC is an association of eighty honors programs and colleges from Nebraska to Texas.
An anonymous donor has funded now twenty-eight 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 Verania Leyva (2019, 2020) Matthew Chambers (2017, 2018), Chesney Davis (2017), and Brenda Godoy (2016), obtained excellent transfers. A 2019 Eckman winner, Jordan Whelchel, won a full-ride to Rice University. NTCC’s lone four-time Eckman-winner, Aaliyah Avellaneda, won a full-ride scholarship to Southern Methodist University, and is studying law.
Andrew is the son of Ryan and Allison Higgins from Mount Vernon. Mary- Faith is the daughter of Jeremy and Robin Wilson of Gilmer.
