By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Estefani Garcia was recently named the winner of the 2025 Elizabeth Chitsey Award, granted each year to the student of Honors Northeast who most exceeded expectations during their first year at NTCC. The award comes with a $200 check.
The 2024 graduate of Mount Pleasant High School has impressed all three of her first-year honors professors as courteous, attentive and highly attuned to class objectives. After the fall semester, Garcia was promoted to Presidential Scholar. As a member of a highly challenging spring honors seminar that combines General Chemistry II and Psychology, Garcia’s drive to achieve has been marked by a remarkable proactivity, alacrity, and on-time-ness. Indeed, she has gained some expertise on the study of willpower. This spring she won $75 and a fourth-place State of Texas Caldwell Award at the meeting of the Texas State Historical Association in Houston for her essay on Mary Kay and her internalization of motivational ideology.
The Chitsey Award has had a remarkably stimulating effect on other down-the-line student awards at NTCC through the years. Previous winners: Stephen Milburn (2013), Kelli Knepp (2014), Morgan Capps (2015), William Jones (2016), Cassidy Watkins (2017), Madison Blood (2018), Daniel Landaverde (2019), Jalyn English (2020), Jordan Chapin (2022), Maddy Smith (2023), and Alison Majors (2024) have all moved on from the Chitsey to regional or national awards such as the Jack Kent Cooke, Leaders of Promise, and/or the Coca Cola Scholarships.
Honors Director, Dr. Andrew Yox notes: “I really thought that after the first decade of the Chitsey, such astounding honorary momentum, would have to come to an end. But both in 2023 and 2024, Maddy Smith, and Alison Majors, became Coca Cola Leaders of Promise, winning the $1,000 national award after obtaining the Chitsey!”
The award also honors a former patron of Honors Northeast, Elizabeth Chitsey (1918-2013). The Winnsboro-native had children and grandchildren who have served in the teaching profession in Northeast Texas, on every level, from pre-school, to college. Each year since 2012, her family has generously supported Honors Northeast, and other functions of NTCC.
