By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Jennifer Gardzina, the wife of NTCC’s Director of Plant Services, Jeff, has helped honors students on many occasions as a public service. In the previous two years she has helped with filming, driving, counseling, and encouraging some of NTCC’s most creative students. In addition, she now had devoted the lessons learned from many years of professional experience in public speaking with Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. On 22 October, Gardzina held a special public speaking workshop and dinner for honors students in the NTCC community room of H101.
An interchange at the conclusion of the October of 2025 panel of NTCC honors students at the East Texas Historical Association Meeting in Nacogdoches helped justify this event. NTCC had just won the Portia Gordon awards for the best panel based on student essays, and it was clear the honors students had creative things to say. But an eminent emeritus professor of Texas A&M at College Station, Dr. Robert Birnbaum stood up and remarked that however good the NTCC essays were, he had a difficult time understanding their remarks. “You must learn to speak up!” he said, or the “game is lost.”
Thanks to Gardzina, NTCC honors students were treated to a free workshop on 22 October at the community room of NTCC on speaking. All the participants received a chance to speak, after which there were times to assess their remarks. Finally, the speakers tried again, and members of the workshop gave another assessment. With every speaker, some improvement, some success was noted, during the second speech. “Work on each of the elements of good speaking” noted Gardzina, and “you will not fail to improve, as well as speak with more confidence.”
Perhaps the most noted failing among the honors student speakers was a lack of eye contact with listeners, and after that, distracting hand movements, or hand placement. Gardzina had many special observations for each speaker, as well as several compliments to pass on. She was particularly intrigued with the anomalous research the students were pursuing.