By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Stephanie Hernandez, the Texas Heritage National Bank Scholar of NTCC, was recently proclaimed the winner of the student election of the Great Plains Honors Council (GPHC). In a plenary session of the regional association at a meeting of the national organization—the NCHC, in San Diego, 8 November, outgoing GPHC president, Ebonie Hill, of Oklahoma State communicated the results. Hernandez will be the one student from eighty honors entities, from community colleges and universities--from Nebraska and Missouri, down to Texas--to join the other professorial members of the GPHC Executive Council.
Hernandez attended her first plenary meeting of the GPHC on 8 November in San Diego, and received a strong round of applause for her success. She spoke in favor of an initiative to support alternate forms of scholarship, such as those expressed in films, at the meetings of the GPHC. This proposal was accepted.
“Hernandez won because she is a foremost student scholar, with unbeatable credentials,” notes NTCC honors director, Dr.
Andrew P. Yox. “In fact, she is the first student in the history of NTCC to not only win five cash awards for her scholarship in history, but to win a sixth one—in another field, in this case, in biology! This is completely unprecedented. Skylar Hodson in 2024 won a Caldwell, a Red River, a McGraw Hill, and a Portia Gordon. Skylar Fondren in 2023 won a Britt, a second McGraw Hill, a Red River, and a Portia Gordon. They were the first two scholars at NTCC to benefit from the possibility of winning Red River Symposium Awards, and Portia Gordon Awards, and thus the leaders until the present. Last spring, Hernandez won a first-in-the-state $400 Caldwell for her pioneering work on Tejano murals in Houston. With this project she went on to win a Britt Award of the GPHC, a second-place Red River Symposium Award, a second-place McGraw Hill Poster Award, and a Portia Gordon Award of the East Texas Historical Association. For her parasitology study on the Black Buffalo Myxos, under Dr. Chris McAllister, she won first place in the oral division of the Red River Symposium, and presented at the 58th annual meeting at Southwestern Association of Parasitology. She also won a $100 Eckman Award last spring, excelling in erudition among the students of the NTCC CHEM-PSYCH Honors Seminar, under Drs. Drew Murphy, and Karyn Skaar.”
“Hernandez has an amazing bilateral skill set,” notes NTCC honors director, Dr. Andrew Yox. “She has excelled in the sciences, and in writing—also winning a third-place Northeast Texas Poetry award last fall! She also is a brilliant conceptualizer and writer. She is quiet, cheerful, polite, intense, bilingual, and remarkably focused when it comes to scholarship.”
The Great Plains Honors Council has operated since 1975. Each year since 2008, NTCC scholars have presented at its annual spring conference. Last year at North Texas University, Hernandez gained her first live exposure to GPHC members by presenting her work on Tejano murals, arguing that the mood of these artworks shifted from protest to pride in the late twentieth century.
Hernandez also plays the role of Selena Quintanilla, the superstar Tejana Singer in the most recent film initiative of Honors Northeast. The film effort, directed by Emma Mendoza, and being produced by Johnathan Ventura, is based on her 2024 research work in Texas history on the Tejano murals.
Stephanie is the daughter of Hector and Nancy Hernandez of of Mount Pleasant. She is a 2024 graduate of Mount Pleasant High School.
