Pictured: Winning Students by their Sponsoring Professors: Bethani Nichols (Professor Andrew Yox) and Abigail Cheyenne Alexander (Professor Melissa Fulgham). Photos courtesy of Dr. Fulgham, and Robert Wren, NTCC Ranch Manager.
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Two NTCC history students emerged on top in the 2026 Bonnie Spencer competition, for the best student projects in history at NTCC, outside of the honors seminars. Each have earned a $50 award. Essays or other projects could have been entered from any history course taken at the college during the 2025-2026 school year, on campus or online.
The winners this year are Abigail Alexander, from Avinger High School, and Bethani Nichols from Chapel Hill High School. This is the first year in the series that high school students, taking college classes, have monopolized the awards, and the first year where only two students emerged on top.
Alexander’s winning project was a vodcast on the Trail of Tears, the infamous displacement of some 60,000 native Americans during the first half of the nineteenth century. Alexander’s research stood out as she employed 12 discrete sources. Dr. Fulgham comments that “the depth of her research, and obvious enthusiasm for learning set her apart from everyone else. Her delight in learning history, and asking questions for more information, made her an obvious choice for the Bonnie Spencer.”
Nichols’ essay concerned the costs and ironic consequences of Islamic terrorism, from the case of the Barbary attacks of the late-eighteenth century, to 9/11. The essay broke new ground, using a comparative assessment. Dr. Yox comments that “what struck me about Nichols’ work was her willingness to revise, and her discovery of parallels found in the separates cases of Islamic terrorism. She showed that in both cases, the United States tended to overreact financially to the threat, and U.S. power ironically emerged as greater on the world stage.”
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 seven 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 thirty-one essays in refereed journals.
