Sealy High School alumnus Matthias Litzmann not only completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology at Sam Houston State in three years, but he will graduate May 13 with honors from the Elliott T. Bowers Honors College, honors from the university and summa cum laude, the highest Latin honors.

On top of that, he was also named a Raven Scholar as one of the top 100 students in the school after he earned Dean’s List all five semesters and was named to the President’s Honor Roll three out of five of those semesters. When the next set of honor rolls get announced, however, he hoped those numbers would increase.

“If the semester ends the way I am planning on it, I’ll be on President’s Honor Roll again so I’ll be on Dean’s List all six semesters then on President’s four out of six semesters,” he said in a May 5 interview.

Litzmann used what he learned growing up in Sealy to help propel him through a collegiate course of study a year less than normal.

“They’re super proud and they’ve always pushed me or just wanted whatever I could do the best but they’ve never been like, ‘You have to do this or we’ll be upset with you,’” he said of his parents Mark and Barbara. “They’re just amazed at everything I’ve been able to accomplish on my own with my own personal motivation and drive.”

He cited his time at Sealy High School, where he earned Salutatorian for the Class of 2018, as the catalyst to finishing his undergraduate degree early.

“The key to my success actually started before I even stepped foot at Sam Houston,” Litzmann said. “In my total span of being at Sealy High School, I took a total of 12 AP (Advanced Placement) tests and one dual-credit class. I got credit on 10 of those AP tests and I got credit in the dual-credit class so I walked into Sam Houston a college sophomore with 42 hours of college credit.”

Three years later, he’s walking out of Sam Houston with three sets of honors and professional experience garnered from his time volunteering at the on-campus research laboratory, The Health and Resilience Initiative for Vulnerable and Excluded Groups (weTHRIVE) lab. He won’t be walking too far away, however, as he’ll pursue a graduate degree from Sam Houston starting in the fall.

“I’m going into the Masters of Counseling here at Sam in the department of education,” Litzmann said. “I am going to go for my LMFT, which is License of Marriage and Family Therapy, and while I will get that I will do the coursework needed to also get the license for my LPC, which is a Licensed Professional Counselor.”

Litzmann said he hadn’t looked too far into the future of the three-year graduate program but also that a lot of his undergraduate recognitions hadn’t settled in quite yet.

“A lot of people ask me, ‘How does it feel to be graduating in eight days?’ or ‘Congrats on all these awards and accomplishments,’ and I think it just hasn’t hit me,” Litzmann said last week. “I think just because I keep thinking at the next thing forward. Once I complete one thing, I’m already looking at the next thing and as well, it’s not something I necessarily view as an accomplishment. It’s something that I set a goal for myself that I needed to do this. This is something I need to do and once I’ve completed or accomplished it, it’s not something that I was like, ‘Oh wow that was amazing, I didn’t expect that.’ It was something I prepared for and expected to, if I do this and do this, then I will accomplish this.”

One of those honors included being awarded the Raven Scholar award for being one of the top 100 students in the school. Of course, with pandemic protocols still in place, the award banquet was a little different than in past years.

“There usually is a banquet but because of COVID-19 restrictions, everything was held over Zoom so there was a Zoom conference with the keynote speaker and one hundred students, very typical of the COVID-19 lifestyle nowadays,” Litzmann said. “I was nominated by the supervisor of the lab, she emailed me and said, ‘There’s the Raven Scholar award and you’ve done such exceptional work in the lab, I want to nominate you for this award is that OK?’ I hadn’t even heard about it before I had to look it up on the website but soon said, ‘That’s fine with me, I don’t know if I’ll get it or what I need to do but if you want to nominate me that’s perfectly OK,’ so after I was nominated I did have to complete a form with a few questions about me and what I’ve done at Sam and my different activities.”

As he reflected on the last three years, Litzmann said he knew he picked the right university to represent.

“It means a great deal to me, it makes me feel very proud and very honored to be a part of that select group here at Sam Houston,” he said. “I feel like Sam is a very prestigious college that might get left out when you think of universities here in Texas, but I don’t think that will be the case for too long. Even though Sam might not get the same notoriety as other colleges, it’s just as good – if not even actually better in some departments – so it made me feel really special that I fit in this very specific criteria of a prestigious college such as Sam Houston.”