Students receive Distinguished Speaker scholarships from bank

TEXARKANA, Texas—Six Texarkana College students received scholarships from the Farmers Bank & Trust Distinguished Speaker series on Thursday.

The $29,000 funding the scholarships, for the students to attend Texas A&M University-Texarkana, was raised from the first Distinguished Speaker event in April, which featured Ben Stein.

James Bramlett, senior vice president of Farmers, said they were honored to be able to help the students further their education in Texarkana.

“We have a giving mission to prioritize education for students,” Bramlett said. “We are proud of the first recipients of the scholarships from the Distinguished Speaker series and their commitment to earning their bachelor’s degree. That’s our focus, to support education.”

The scholarship recipients are Brooke Bowen, Adrianna Byrd, Charity Lewis, Lil Loosier, Valentiane Rachal and Curtis Tolliver.

TC President Dr. Jason Smith congratulated the scholarship recipients and thanked the bank for creating the Distinguished Speaker series to help area students complete their education.

“You worked hard, you deserve this scholarship and hopefully you will be as successful at Texas A&M University-Texarkana as you were at TC. I’m very proud of you,” he told the recipients.

“Affording a bachelor’s degree for most of our students at Texarkana College is a financial barrier. Thank you to Farmers Bank & Trust Distinguished Speaker series for the scholarships. We are able to break down those barriers for our community and I think it’s truly an honorable thing that you’re doing. I want to say a special thanks to James Bramlett for keeping it here, keeping it local, which is very important and also educating our community at the same time,” Smith said.

A&M-Texarkana President Dr. Emily Cutrer also congratulated the recipients and thanked the bank for working to partner with TC and the university to further education in the community.

“Congratulations, and this is very important, welcome to the Eagle family. We are so excited to have you as new students at Texas A&MTexarkana,” she told the students. “I want to say a big thank you to Farmers Bank. Farmers Bank truly understands what it means to be a community bank and partner with other members of the community to make this a better place for all of us to live in.”

Bramlett also announced that Capt. Scott Kelly will speak in April at the next Distinguished Speaker event.

According to his website, Keley is a former military fighter pilot and test pilot, an engineer, a retired astronaut and a retired U.S. Navy captain.

A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS.

In October 2015, he set the record for the total accumulated number of days spent in space, the single longest space mission by an American astronaut. He lives in Houston, Texas.

For more information on the Distinguished Speaker series, go to tamut.edu/ farmers.

Staff photo by Hunt Mercier ■ James Bramlett, senior vice president of Business Development and Lending at Farmer’s Bank, in Texarkana, Texas, speaks about the money raised for scholarships from the Distinguished Speaker series on Thursday in the lobby of the bank in Texarkana, Texas. Ben Stein was the previous speaker and raised $29,000 dollars for scholarships. The bank gave six recipients scholarships to Texas A&M University-Texarkana.