Record details
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I suppose there wouldn’t be a Clifton Henry II if my father hadn’t met my mother at TJC. They were both strong students; in fact, my mom was in the top 10 percent of her class at Robert E. Lee High School. Education has always been important to both my parents.
I know they have been pleased that I studied and got good grades. Mom read somewhere that intelligence passes through the mother and especially remembered that when my grades were good, although my father also excelled in school.
It wasn’t my plan to stay in Tyler for college. As No. 6 in my graduating class at John Tyler (behind five excellent female students), I was thrilled that the Tyler Rotary Club selected me as “Most Outstanding Senior” and I received scholarship offers to several great colleges. Morehouse College in Atlanta was one of my dream colleges but the more I looked elsewhere, the more appealing TJC became.
I received a personal letter from the TJC President Dr. Mike Metke inviting me to be a Presidential Honors Scholar and be part of a special community of scholars. It promised a full scholarship, small classes, personal attention and a level of engagement not available anywhere else.
Math has always been my strongest area and TJC math chair, Chris Chappa, met with me when I was a junior in high school, and I was taking both pre-calculus and calculus at the time. He tested me and gave me the confidence and encouragement to do well in the near future. At TJC, Mr. Chappa became a mentor as well as my professor. He also became my boss after he hired me as a grader in the math department.
My parents had me late in life. As an only child, the people I related to best were adults. I was (and still am) shy and not as skilled socially as most of my peers. During high school, I often ate lunch alone.
The professors and classmates in TJC’s honors program welcomed and embraced me. They helped me discover who I am and what I could become. Study groups, community service projects, and all the student life at TJC helped me form friendships for life. Mr. David Funk, director of the Presidential Honors Program, has had a huge, positive impact on me as a professor and as a trusted mentor.
So many people at TJC, from classmates to the TJC president, helped me overcome insecurities and gave me confidence to reach toward the potential they saw in me. I was at a country club scholarship event with Dr. Metke where he was visiting with a community leader. He told this elegant lady, “I want you to meet Clifton Henry. He’s going to be famous someday.”
TJC nurtured and built me up for my transition to UT Austin. They knew me well enough to write great personal letters of recommendation to help me get into the mathematics program where I am majoring in statistics. It’s been a struggle for me adjusting to UT Austin even now, and I know I wouldn’t have made it had I come straight from high school.
In January I was invited to TJC to speak at the opening convocation and relate my experiences so that professors could better understand how to help prepare students and give them the greatest opportunities for success after TJC.
TJC was challenging and thought provoking. It made me stretch myself in fields outside finite areas like math. My colloquium professor, Jae Jerkins, and many others, had tremendous influence. They helped me appreciate that the humanities are also a special world of knowledge. Most importantly, my TJC professors will be remembered for their own humanity and caring. That’s what helps make special teachers such great conveyors of knowledge. In some colleges, the professors will seem like lecturing robots with huge classes filled with hundreds of students busily taking notes. Being able to learn from knowing and caring people has made all the difference for me.
I’m proud that my hometown, Tyler, Texas, had the foresight 90 years ago to create TJC as the vehicle that can help take
- Biography
- TJC Hero and Friend, Clifton Henry, won many awards and much recognition as a Presidential Honors Scholar at TJC before transferring last fall to the University of Texas at Austin. Clifton and many of his classmates will be famous one day. Meeting them will put you at ease about the future well-being of our region and our country as they come of age.
