Portrait of a Winner By Tiffany Beeler

And the contest winner is…Terry Thomas! On April 17, Jefferson Community and Technical College’s department of communication’s faculty chose Thomas as the winner of the annual Graduation Speaker Contest. Thomas delivers the graduation speech at JCTC’s Graduation on May 11. She receives $100 and the 2009 Maria B. Miller Speech award.

Thomas was born in Louisville, Kentucky but moved to Southern Illinois in 1980. She returned to Louisville in 2004 with her husband and daughter. Her husband died in 2005. A year later she decided to pursue her dream of an education at Jefferson Community and Technical College. She was accepted into the Nuclear Medicine program in 2007. “The reason I chose the Nuclear Medicine program was due to the fact my husband had many Nuclear Stress Tests and I was fascinated by the procedure. I felt I could be a benefit since I knew what it was like from both sides as a family member of a patient and a technologist,” explains Thomas. She graduates with a 4.0 GPA with an associate degree as a Certified Nuclear Medicine Technologist.

Thomas has also won other awards such as, the Paul Cole Scholarship from the Society of Nuclear Medicine (2009), the Norton Healthcare Scholarship (2007, 2008, and 2009), The Samantha Ann McDonald Scholarship (2008) and the Professional Business Women’s Scholarship (2008).