Pictured Winning Students in front of their Sponsoring Professors: Emma Frances Mendoza (Professor Andrew Yox) Kerri Rhodes (Professor Melissa Fulgham) Brooklyn-Grace Scrofani (Associate Professor John Russo)
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Three NTCC history students emerged on top in the 2025 Bonnie Spencer competition, for the best student essays in history at NTCC, outside of the honors seminars. Each will earn a $50 award. This year, a generous donation to honors by former NTCC Presidential Scholar, Jessica Velazquez, helped round off the funding for this contest, as well as covering another award. Essays could have been entered from any history course taken at the college during the 2024-2025 school year, on campus or online.
The winners this year are Emma Mendoza, from Mount Pleasant, Kerri Rhodes, from Hughes Springs, and Brooklyn-Grace Scrofani from Camp County.
Mendoza’s work dovetailed from a long fascination she has had with sewing. Her thesis on the “elusive time dividends of new technology” focused on what would seem like an open-and-shut case of leisure creation. The Singer Sewing Machine of the 1850s cut the time involved in making a man’s shirt from fourteen hours to one hour. Mendoza shows, however, that society compensated by abetting a multiplication of garments. During the late-nineteenth century, Americans wore more clothes than ever before at once, and also successively. A norm shifted to “ending rather than mending.” The sweatshop became a cruel byproduct of the innovation.
Rhodes’ essay explored how Eleanor Roosevelt expanded the traditional role of the American First Lady from primarily serving as hostess to one of active engagement and advocacy. Roosevelt served as the “eyes and ears” of her husband, who was struggling with polio, traveling throughout the country during the Great Depression, and even overseas during World War II. Her reports helped shape government policy in ways not commonly known. Rhodes used primary source materials such as Life magazine’s coverage of Eleanor’s 1943 South Pacific Tour visiting the warfront as well as secondary sources in her essay. Rhodes discussed Eleanor’s actions in support of human rights and leadership within the United Nations.
Scrofani wrote a seven-page essay that related to native-American ancestors in her own family. “The Calculated Downfall of Tribal Communities,” details a continuing saga of government-led activity which undermined tribal communities in America. Scrofani’s thesis gathers strength as she details what she regards as insincere efforts of the government to “help” native-Americans in efforts such as the Dawes Act, and in the kind of federal aid that reservations receive, in proportion to their geographical disadvantages. She concludes that the American national government has maintained their hegemony over the tribes through jejune slogans which alleviate national guilt without helping the native peoples.
The contest honors the student founder of the college’s first history club in 2002. Bonnie Spencer Harris subsequently helped transition the efforts of the NTCC Webb Society and Honors Northeast toward feature-length films. She has also raised and donated funds for activities in history at NTCC.
History at NTCC offers courses in American, African-American, Mexican-American Texas, and World Civilization. The college’s Walter Prescott Webb Society, linked both to Honors Northeast and to the study of Texas history, has won six state Caldwell Awards on the state level, for its film work on Texas legends. Each year since 2008, students at NTCC have presented works of history nationally, regionally, and locally. Since 2010, as noted on the Wall of Honor in the Honors Northeast website:< https://www.ntcc.edu/academics/honors-northeast/community/wall-honor-ho…;, NTCC history students have published twenty-nine essays in refereed journals.
