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Pictured: ������Ƶ��ý alumnus, Ricky Huitema, Dr. Andrew Yox, and ������Ƶ��ý alumnus, Matthew Jordan at the new lithium factory outside Texarkana, created by EnergyX out of Austin

By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director

When two aspiring engineers, both from Pittsburg High School, placed first and second in the Northeast Texas Poetry Contest of 2012, then vice president of the college, Dr. Herbert Riedel, was impressed.  He had the two read their poems to the subsequent meeting of the ������Ƶ��ý Board of Trustees.

Fourteen years later, both of these former ������Ƶ��ý honors students, Matthew Jordan and Ricky Huitema, are still involved with creative imagining. Only now, the object of their thought concerns technological innovations that are reshaping our region.  Matthew Jordan, whose work with Dr. Jonathan McCullough, and the college’s Caddo-Pottery plans led to ������Ƶ��ý’s first Caldwell Chapter Award, also went on to win ������Ƶ��ý’s third Jack Kent Cooke mega-scholarship. Thanks in part to the encouragement of honors donor, Karen Harmon (and her willingness to drive them to Lubbock), Jordan—and Huitema (������Ƶ��ý’s first Terry Award Scholar) went from ������Ƶ��ý to Texas Tech.  Jordan, also then went on to earn his doctorate in chemical engineering at Louisiana State University. After winning a prestigious national science foundation grant in 2019, Jordan won a position with an ambitious energy startup out of Austin, EnergyX.

Jordan, working out of Austin, has spent the last three years of his life as the director of a most important segment of the lithium production line. As the world pivots from combustion chambers to cathodes, and from carbon to lithium, a most important production step involves the transformation of worthless lithium chloride to priceless lithium hydroxide. In Austin, Jordan designed from scratch an apparatus with a thick plastic membrane that effects this transformation. To be sure, the extraction of Lithium from the Smackover formation of the Ark-La-Tex involves many steps, but Jordan and EnergyX are involved in an All-American patent line with lithium that is only rivaled by the Chinese, who have their own secrets in this vital new business.

A public unveiling of EnergyX’s new lithium plant in Hooks, Texas near Texarkana occurred earlier this spring, on 26 March. Among the invited guests who could observe Jordan’s breakthrough, and the other attainments of EnergyX were long-time friend of Jordan, Huitema, and ������Ƶ��ý honors director, Dr. Andrew Yox.  Amidst the festivities--which included free hors d’ oeuvres, an open bar, free hats, and T-shirts, EnergyX’s CEO, Teague Egan explained how the Smackover, though 10,000 feet deep, is still the best formation for lithium in the nation. Egan believes that before EnergyX is through, it will have a seventeen-billion-dollar impact on our region.

Huitema, after graduating from Texas Tech, accepted an all-expense paid fellowship to study at Luoyang China.  He then returned to our region to work as an electrical engineer at Priefert Manufacturing in Mount Pleasant.  He married a young woman from Diana, and has now has three children.  He reports that he is working on a new operation at Priefert’s which will in the next year involve the use of robots for the first time in the welding of farm equipment.

Yox notes that “Huitema, and Jordan are true Northeast Texas success stories. They were raised in our area, they contributed to the success of our college as star student achievers, and they remain eager—even zealous, to contribute to the economic stability and life of our region.”