Pictured (from left): Dr. Andrew Yox, Ian Mares, Araceli Landaverde, and Dr. Melissa Fulgham.
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
For their performance in the fall of 2025 in honors at NTCC in relation to their peers, two Presidential Scholars have won $100 checks. Sophomore Araceli Landaverde, came out ahead among the sophomores, scoring the highest GPA in the fall-semester “Hu-Music” Honors Seminar. Ian Mares, for his top scores in both Biology and Texas History, came in on top in the “BioTex Honors Seminar.”
“The Eckman winners for the fall of 2025 represent levels of achievement that deserve a regional spotlight,” noted Honors Director, Dr. Andrew P. Yox. “Landaverde is a tough and persevering scholar who kept up with her professors to produce a superior work of research on her specialty of Roman Catholicism. She also had an excellent Whatley performance last fall, featuring a children’s book she had written about a father and daughter. Mares was the clearly the star in Honors Biology where he early on became the model student to follow. He also wrote a highly competitive essay on the history of Northeast Texas, for which he conducted an extensive interview with, Michael Hawron, the author of Little Town with a Big Heart, a story about New Boston, Texas.
An anonymous donor has funded now thirty-two Eckman Awards at NTCC in memory of the late Richard and Joan Eckman. Richard Eckman was a long-time inventor for Dresser Industries, a signature Texas oilfield corporation. Many NTCC Eckman Award winners such as Verania Leyva (2019, 2020) Matthew Chambers (2017, 2018), Chesney Davis (2017), and Brenda Godoy (2016, obtained excellent transfers. A 2019 Eckman winner, Jordan Whelchel, won a full-ride to Rice University. NTCC’s lone four-time Eckman-winner, Aaliyah Avellaneda, won a full-ride scholarship to Southern Methodist University.
