Estefani Garcia is the fourth Dr. and Mrs. Bradley Witt Scholar of NTCC, receiving special support for her trip to San Diego, as she was accepted last summer to present at the 2025 meeting of the NCHC this fall. Early last spring she won a state of Texas Caldwell Award for her work on Mary Kay. Later in the spring, she was the winner of the $200 Elizabeth Chitsey Award for the Honors Student who performed most above expectations. Recently she helped clinch NTCC’s Portia Gordon awards that were given to four of our panelists by the East Texas Historical Association (ETHA) with her work on Mary Kay as the “Queen of Motivation.”
Stephanie Hernandez is the 2025-26 Texas Heritage National Bank Scholar of Honors Northeast and NTCC’s nominee for student president of the GPHC. Hernandez has set an NTCC record for the most scholarly awards won by any student in the college’s history, and she has done this in two fields!—biology and history. Last spring, she won a first-in-the-state, university division Caldwell for her work on Tejano muralism. This work has also brought her a Britt Award of the Great Plains Honors Council, and second-place awards at the Red River Symposium, and the McGraw Hill contest. Recently she won the Portia Gordon Award of the East Texas Historical Association. Hernandez also won a first-place Red River Symposium Award for her work on parasitology study on the Black Buffalo Myxos. Last spring she was the winner of the $100 Eckman Award, having the highest GPA in the Chem-Psych Seminar. Recently she has been the winner of a Texas Star Award, and a Northeast Texas Poetry Award.
Andrew Higgins is the 2025-2026 James and Elizabeth Whatley Scholar of Honors Northeast. He was the winner recently of the Portia Gordon Award for moderating the NTCC panel at the ETHA. He has presented his work on space exploration and God in Kansas City at the GPHC, and at the Red River Symposium. His work won admittance into the 2025 meeting of the NCHC. At the end of fall 2024, he was the winner of the $100 Eckman Award for having the highest GPA in the HuMusic Honors Seminar. This last fall, his image of a tree canopy in Franklin county won second. Higgins has been involved this fall semester in one of the most rigorous initiatives ever undertaken by a member of NTCC’s Phi Theta Kappa (PTK). He has conducted and filmed the bulk of the 40 interviews that will be featured as videos for NTCC’s 40th-year celebration.
Ian Mares is a 2025 graduate of Paul Pewitt High School. At Pewitt, he was active in the National Honor Society (NHS), the Student Council, and the Fellowship of Christian athletes (FCA). He excelled in athletics, in club soccer, tennis and football. Last summer, Mares played the role of the San Antonio artist, Felipe Reyes, in the summer film project of Honors Northeast. He has reported on this experience, presenting at the fall meeting of the WPWS in Georgetown.
Hailey Randall is from the village of Poughquag in New York State. In her youth, she learned how to play the trumpet, the piano, and the guitar—and took dance lessons. She moved to Naples, Texas just after her junior year in High School, and worked last year both on her GED, and courses at NTCC in which she excelled. She joined Phi Theta Kappa, and Sigma Kappa Delta. Last summer she became unit production director of the NTCC film effort, sequencing the filming. She has reported on this experience, presenting at the fall meeting of the WPWS in Georgetown. Randall aspires to become a lawyer.
Adam Richards was born in Henderson, Nevada, where his family endured some harrowing experiences. He came to Morris County in his junior year, and had to play a “big game of catching up.” At Daingerfield High School he participated in varsity tennis, math University Interscholastic League (UIL), science UIL, and one-act plays. Last summer he participated with the NTCC team that went to San Antonio for film research. He won first place and $400 at the 2025 Northeast Texas Poetry Reading for his poem on the area’s semi-rural ambience. He aspires to be an architect.
Isabel Tresidder was homeschooled, and her family is from South Africa. She accepted an invitation two summers ago to work at the LBJ presidential library in Austin, and then wrote much of the script of a film on oil and politics which went on to win a Webb Chapter Award. She placed second in the 2024 Northeast Texas Poetry Contest with a work about feral hogs. She presented work which she performed on Lyndon Johnson at the fall 2024 meeting of the WPWS in San Antonio. Last year she also pursued an independent study course with Dr. McAllister on parasites in rodents, and made a few presentations with this study. Last summer she was a Winner of a Texas Star Award of PTK, and a Leader of Promise.
