East Central Community College students earned first-place awards for the first time at the 2008 National Phi Beta Lambda Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Ga. Phi Beta Lambda prepares students for careers in business.

Four students, Carlos Rice of Louisville, Drew Harrison of Little Rock, and Leslie Nash and Josh Dickerson, both of Union, won top honors in the Parliamentary Procedure competition and will be inducted into the Mississippi PBL Hall of Fame at the organization’s State Leadership Conference in 2009.

Brookes Mayes of Newton also received special recognition at the national conference for being selected to PBL’s Who’s Who in Mississippi. She was given the highest recognition of any Mississippi PBL member. Mayes teamed with Rice and Dickerson to finish seventh in the Small Business Plan competition.

Also winning honors at the national event were Ann Valentine of Hickory and Leslie Hollingsworth of Forest, second place, Community Service Project; Dollye Packer of Lake and Sabra Fortenberry of Union, third, E-business; Nash, fifth, Local Chapter Annual Business Report; Shaun Cooper of Decatur, eighth, Word Processing; and Brooke Barrett of Union, 10th, Partnership with Business Project.

Theta Chi also received the prestigious Gold Seal Chapter Award and was recognized for receiving the most awards of any Mississippi chapter.

Also attending the national conference were Britni Wright of Louisville, William Cumberland of Union, Jonathan Federick of Hickory and Evans Summers Jones of Walnut Grove, who were among the 17 ECCC students who qualified for the national contest following state competition. Theta Chi advisers Christy Ferguson, Judy Hurtt, Ruth Gregory, Brenda Johnson and Thomas Fortenberry accompanied students to Atlanta.