Honors in Action-Rewarded

350 TO BE HONORED DURING ST. PHILIP’S COLLEGE PHI THETA KAPPA HONOR SOCIETY INDUCTION CEREMONY TOMORROW

All are welcome to celebrate student excellence during the St. Philip's College Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society fall 2018 induction ceremony Nov. 28 at 5 p.m in the Watson Fine Arts Center at 1801 Martin Luther King Drive. The ceremony features the induction of 350 students into both the world’s largest educational honor society and the official honor society of two-year colleges hdsdc.aplrealestate.com/spc/Phi-theta-Kappa.

Guests will meet with students who earned their way to graduation-with-honors with a class rank in the top 20 percent. The event is also an eight-year team celebration of the season that students, alumni, supporters and employees made college history by leading their chapter from top-100-of-500-in-Texas status to top-three-of-500-in-Texas status.

The chapter members being inducted Nov. 28 were among the student body members who helped the college and the award-winning chapter members earned both its reaffirmation of accreditation and its 2018 Governor's Award for Performance Excellence and its fair share of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award while embarking on $100 million in new construction and transformational capital improvements. The chapter’s 2018 Honors in Action project focuses on service animal awareness and advocacy, and the newly inducted students are joining current society members who have been on amazing journeys. Here are a few of them:

• Among the honored will be Rose Bechebuh, a second year pre nursing student and a member of Epiphany Anglican Church at 211 Roleto Drive. “I am coming straight from Africa---Cameroon---to attend St. Philip’s College, and I’ve been part of the Phi Theta Kappa team at my college since the summer. The two best things about the Phi Theta Kappa experience in a program this successful are the teamwork and helping the less privileged. The service animal project we have for 2018 is phenomenal. I’ve learned how people are not aware of the rights of people who own service dogs. We are training to try to help restaurants raise their consciousness to help their customers with service animals. This is my first time addressing the topic, and although I didn’t know about the rights, I knew about the animals. We are sensitizing the population, and we are each working on this right now. I'm letting people in my church know,” said Bechebuh. 

• Dorathy Tarpeh (licensed vocational nurse) personally serves meals at San Antonio Food Bank, and in addition to assisting in sorting and packaging food items for distribution, she assists by maintaining the garden area where fresh vegetables are grown for clients in need. Tarpeh is one of only three 2018 St. Philip’s College Dr. Adena Williams Loston Presidential Scholarship Award recipients. Through giving back and achieving academically, Tarpeh has contributed to helping St. Philip’s College achieve record enrollment numbers and outstanding community engagement while bringing a Governor’s Award for Performance Excellence to San Antonio in 2018, and its share of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

• From the Food Bank with colleague scholar Tarpeh to the Special Olympics through her physical therapy assistant student association membership, Virginia Tovar (physical therapy assistant) gives back to her community year round while as a 2018 St. Philip’s College Dr. Adena Williams Loston Presidential Scholarship Award recipient while helping her college on its performance excellence journey.

• 2018 society inductee Passion Williams-Toomer (kinesiology) brings status as the college’s 2017 season HBCU All-Star to the Nov. 28 event. Toomer trained in Washington, D.C. for a year of public service aimed at helping officials in the White House and at the Department of Education meaningfully connect with students in order to evaluate and advance academic excellence at historically Black colleges.

Individual award recipients for 2018

• All Texas Academic Team – Katrina King, Giselle Vasquez and Omar Hernandez
• 2018 Coca-Cola Academic Team Silver Scholar – Katrina King
• Hall of Honor for Chapter Officer – Katrina King
• Hall of Honor for Chapter Officer – Roxanne Saunders
• Award of Merit for Outstanding Alumni – Jennifer Garcia-Valdez
• Outstanding Friend of Texas – Josie Dawn Carrillo
• Inducted into the Texas Region District V Hall of Honor – Kailey Jaramillo (ECHS), Trinidad Covarrubias, Ashley Hernandez, Amanda Olveda, Adriana Alvarado-Rivera, Jennifer Salyer, Dominique Mann, Sonia Garcia, and Jesse Castillo
• 2018 Coca-Cola Leaders of Promise Scholar – Christopher Tanner 

Chapter Awards for 2018

• College Project Award of Merit – Quality Enhancement Plan Student Focus Groups
• Digital Yearbook Award
• 5 Star Chapter – 8 years consecutively 

Find details on the chapter online at http://hdsdc.aplrealestate.com/spc/experience-spc/campus-life/get-involved/honor-society/.