By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Adam Richards, the Bill Glass Scholar of NTCC, was recently proclaimed the winner of the student election of the Great Plains Honors Council (GPHC). GPHC president, Ebonie Hill, of Oklahoma State communicated the results in an emailed announcement to members of the association on 26 October 2026. Richards will be the one student from eighty honors entities, from community colleges and universities--from Nebraska and Missouri, south to Texas--to join the other professorial members of the GPHC Executive Council. His first in-person meetings will occur this November 12-14 at the meeting of the national organization of which the GPHC is a regional part—the National Collegiate Honors Council. The November meeting is in New Orleans.
Richards has a unique life story. It includes a time of homelessness in Las Vegas, lost high school years, and a successful immigration and new start in Northeast Texas. After graduating from Daingerfield High School in the spring of 2025, he came to NTCC with a Presidential Scholarship. Last spring in Irving, Adams won a $300 second-place Caldwell Award for his essay on the emergence of French Empire Architecture in Texas. This fall, this essay also empowered NTCC’s student panel at the East Texas Historical Association to first place, and a set of four $200 Portia Gordon Awards. In the spring of 2026, Adams became the 13th winner of the $200 Elizabeth Chitsey Award. This prize, which has an almost uncanny correlation with down-the-road regional and national awards, went for the honors student who most exceeded expectations.
“Adams won I believe,” notes NTCC honors director, Dr. Andrew P. Yox “because he was able to capitalize on the admirable support system that stretches from NTCC to its donors, and related associations. Personal mentoring, an incentivization corridor consisting of the Chitsey and Poetry prizes, a prize at the state level thanks in part to the anomalous activity of the Walter Prescott Webb Society, entry as a poster presenter into the National Collegiate Honors Council, and the victory in Nacogdoches with the Portia Gordon all gave him an amazing story. On paper not even the university students of the council could rise to the challenge. I might also note that Richards is a great writer, whose curiosity, and honesty has allowed him to leverage his life experiences in a positive way.”
The Great Plains Honors Council has operated since 1975. Each year since 2008, NTCC scholars have presented at its annual spring conference, and also at nationals, at the NCHC.
Richards has been active in other facets of life at NTCC. For his performance as Clemente Idar in last summer’s honors’ film, he won a third place Stevenson Award for acting. In the fall of 2025 he won the $400 first-place poetry award, at the Northeast Texas Poetry Reading for his poem, “Northeast Pine Curtains.”