Pictured (from left): Wilson, Hamlin, Hernandez, and Mendoza.
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Dr. John Zubizarreta, a recently retired expert in honor education, once summarized what he believed was the most important insight of his career. “Conscientious mentoring” he said, was the “key to transformative experiences in education.” This year’s 17th annual McGraw Hill Poster Contest at the Whatley Foyer on 9 May 2025 again attested to the importance of such academic counseling. All of the fifteen student participants this year received extensive one-on-one professionalization time or correspondence with faculty. In general, those who performed better, received even more, and most importantly, were willing to make the time to receive more mentoring. In recent years, virtually no one even shows up to the contest, despite its lucrative prizes, without an extensive honors seminar, independent study, or special research experience with a professor who is willing to go above-and-beyond with both encouragement and help.
The contest this year, as with previous regional contests this semester, again attested to the fact that one-on-one mentoring remains alive and well at NTCC. Though the scores and enthusiasm of the community judges dipped slightly this year, their feedback again indicated that they were impressed with the creativity and expertise of NTCC’s honors students in their realms of interest. The NTCC trustee from Morris County, Sondra Fowler, noted that it should “not even be called a poster contest, as it is more a competition involving ideas.” Number one this year, in a surprise, was the first-semester honors student Emma Mendoza. She leveraged a passionate interest she had with sewing, with a history 1301 paper requirement in an eight-week course, and an honors professor willing to guide a five-page assignment into a thirteen-page essay. Mendoza argued that though the Singer Sewing Machine of the 1850s allowed women to sew a man’s shirt fourteen times faster than before, society simply compensated by wearing more clothes at once and successively. Mendoza, winning the first prize and $400, also showed on her poster how other promising new technologies failed to provide promised time dividends. Expected new worlds of leisure have never arrived.
Stephanie Hernandez won $300 and second place with her poster on the transformation of Chicano murals from protest to pride in Texas and California. She developed this idea last semester in the BioTex honors seminar. Hernandez, who also generated a prize-winning work on the parasites of the Black Buffalo Fish in a special research-intensive course in biology, has set new records with her scholarly achievements at NTCC. In a single semester she has won a $400 first-place state of Texas Caldwell Award for her essay on Tejano murals, a $100 Britt Award of the Great Plains Honors Council for her poster on Tejano murals, a $100 Red-River Symposium Award for the best oral presentation (for work on fish parasites), a $50 second place at Red River for her poster Tejano murals, and now, the second-place $300 McGraw Hill win.
NTCC’s Alpha Mu Chi has had another exceptional semester as a top chapter of the international honors society, Phi Theta Kappa. Emily Hamlin has been the point person for the chapter’s award-winning work on Northeast Texas folktales. Hamlin came in third in the McGraw Hill contest and won $200. One judge noted that Hamlin seemed to know “every detail about the project.” Mary-Faith Wilson optimized her honors seminar research into a work about cowboy conservation in a post cowboy age. She won $100 for a poster that described the literary work of Elmer Kelton and Larry McMurtry as a kind of ethnic maintenance effort. In her two Red River and two McGraw Hill competitions while at NTCC, Wilson has won awards in three of the contests.
In 2018, when the contest was low-scaled to prevent ties, no one received a grade of 11 or 12. This was true as well in 2020, 2021, and 2022. To receive an eleven, a student and their poster must be considered not just exemplary, but a paragon in two of three categories--scholarly originality, persuasiveness and over-all oral and visual impact. Two years ago, Alyssa Breann Ochoa wowed the judges with a 11.6 average, the highest score ever recorded. This year again, all the scores fell below 11, with Mendoza receiving a 10.8. Clustered right behind Wilson in the winner’s circle were three other esteemed works: Yahir Garcia’s poster on honors film-making, Gracie Gray’s work on fish parasites, and Araceli Landaverde’s work on the vitality of Hispanic Catholicism in the Southwest .
The particular élan of the contest, and the opportunities presented for student growth arise each year because of the quality of the judges. This year, Andrea Reyes a member of NTCC’s first, 2007 class of Presidential Scholars—a former Hughes Springs valedictorian, served as adjudicator and judge for the tenth year in a row. Other judges included: Aalijah Avellaneda, recent graduate of Southern Methodist University and NTCC’s 11th Jack-Kent Cooke recipient; Dr. Elaine Beason of Mount Pleasant who taught formerly at Texas A&M, Texarkana; Suzanne Boatner, wife of former Mount Pleasant Mayor, Jerry Boatner who has been involved in many levels of life at NTCC; Sondra Fowler, NTCC Trustee from Morris County who served as the head of Conoco’s global communication outreach before she retired; Jennifer Gardzina, the wife of Physical Plant Director, Jeff Gardzina. Jennifer has become active in many dimensions of college life; Dr. Chuck Hamilton of Mount Pleasant who also teaches as an online professor at the University of Southern New Hampshire, and Rev. Dr. Wayne Renning of Mount Pleasant, a former circuit leader among Lutheran congregations in Northeast Texas. Each judge gave the presenting students a chance to demonstrate the viability of their ideas, and, in turn, shared elements of their life experience that was germane to their work.
In addition to the generous benevolence this year of Jerald and Mary Lou Mowery of Mount Vernon in enabling this competition, NTCC’s yearly poster contest owes much to the continued financial support of the McGraw-Hill Education Corporation over the years. Again, this year, the contest is a tribute to the special work of Bill Welsh, and Casey Slaght who work in the corporate office in Dubuque, Iowa.
NTCC professors such as Dr. Andrew Daniel, Dr. Melissa Fulgham, Dr. Chris McAllister, Dr. Drew Murphy, and Dr. Karyn Skaar played crucial roles in mentoring and inspiriting the students to prepare for the poster contests this year. The participating students outside those in the winning circle included Remington Covey of Camp County, Sarah Dierflinger of Winnsboro, Estefanie Garcia of Mount Pleasant, Yahir Garcia of Mount Pleasant, Gracie Gray of Daingerfield, Emily Hamlin of Morris County, Skylar Hodson of Titus County, Araceli Landaverde of Mount Pleasant, Rebeca Martinez of Mount Pleasant, Emma Mendoza of Mount Pleasant, Jeisy Munoz of Mount Pleasant, Andrew Perez of Mount Pleasant, and Noah Pettey of Mount Pleasant,
The contest each year is open to all high school and collegiate students in the region. Among the winners, Mendoza and Hernandez reside in Mount Pleasant, Hamlin in Morris County, and Mary-Faith Wilson, in Gilmer.
