The Mary Jon, and J.P. Bryan Leadership in Education Award of $5,000 goes out each year to a higher education professor for outstanding attainments in historical pedagogy. University professors have been the usual recipients of this Texas-wide accolade, with educators from Sul Ross, Tarleton State, and the University of Texas at El Paso, winning the most recent awards. However, in the last twelve years, two of the winners have not only been from a smaller community college—they have been from the same institution—Northeast Texas Community College. Both were honored recently at a luncheon in Irving, Texas on 6 March during the meeting of the TSHA where all of the past winners of the Mary Jon, and J.P. Bryan Leadership Award were invited for a free meal, a free night of lodging at the Irving Westin Hotel, and given a special red and gold pin.
Dr. Melissa Fulgham came to °®¶¹ÊÓƵ´«Ã½ in 2008. She has been the director of the award-winning Phi Theta Kappa Chapter of °®¶¹ÊÓƵ´«Ã½ which has engaged in several history-based projects, including the recent Forty-Stories in Forty Years project for the 40th anniversary of the college. She has also mentored many prize-winning student-works in history. A notable example was Courtney Baldwin’s winning poster presentation at the 2019 meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Association in New Orleans, where an °®¶¹ÊÓƵ´«Ã½ student bested an array of university candidates from some of the best honors programs in the nation. Fulgham also has served as director of the history department. Dr. Andrew Yox came to °®¶¹ÊÓƵ´«Ã½ in 1994. Since 2007, he has served as the director of the college-wide honors program, Honors Northeast, and has mentored a large number of student-works in Texas history, over thirty of which have been published. One recent highlight has been the work of Stephanie Hernandez on Tejano murals that won five cash awards in various scholarly competitions. Since 2012, Honors Northeast, under Yox’s direction, has premiered an annual feature-length, original film in Texas history.
Under the leadership of J.P. Bryan, the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) gives out a series of awards each year for superior monographs, and works of research. The TSHA maintains the online Texas Handbook, the chief reference point today for all work in Texas History. The TSHA also has a very active education division, led by Director, Kimberly Peña. The division maintains student groups in state history that comparatively, in the case of other states, have long fallen from being active. The TSHA recently cut meeting registrations for students to zero, and has begun in some cases to subsidize travel and hotel costs for student groups.
