By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
For the 36th time, thanks to honors donors such as Drs. Jim and Paula Archer, NTCC honors students were able to take a free, cultural day-trip to a big city. Thirteen students and two NTCC staff drivers left campus at 7:00 a.m., 19 September for a whirlwind experience that began with free breakfasts at Starbucks in Greenville, and ended with improv comedy with the Four Day Weekend troupe in Dallas. The itinerary also included a stay at the United States Bureau of Engraving north of Fort Worth, the Fort Worth cultural district, with its great museum trio of the Kimbell, the Amon Carter, and the Modern Art, a stopover for tourism and a supper at Sundance Square, and a late-night stop at Buc-ees in Royce City. The wife of NTCC’s plant director, Jennifer Gardzina, who has helped out at NTCC in several capacities, and Honors Director, Dr. Andrew Yox, drove.
The Bureau of Engraving tour was a novelty of the 2025 fall trip. The Government facility at Fort Worth prints more than half of the “paper money” now being used in the United States. Actually, the group learned, the money used in the U.S. currency is not paper at all but a composite of cotton and linen which is very seriously engraved and printed with the goal of keeping the U.S. currency the best in the world. The group learned that the actual composition of the ink of our currency is a secret, that not even the bulk of employees at the facility know where the vault is--where the billions of dollars-worth of product are stored, and that the Bureau also prints currency for the benefit of other nations.
Honors Director, Dr. Andrew Yox, notes “one of the most formidable assets of the experience in high education involves networking, getting to know others who share our challenges, learning from and mentoring them, helping, and being helped by them. We at Northeast Texas Community College are so beholden to donors such as Drs. Jim and Paula Archer, and Jennifer Gardzina who have enhanced this basic reticulation, and in the process have also encouraged an enduring team spirit in honors.”
