The Texas wine industry has been growing slowly for a number of years, but in the last five to 10 years, it’s exploded. “The Southern High Plains is great for grape growing,” says Tom Thompson, chairman of Tech’s plant and soil science department. (more…)

Though some might believe that Melissa Currie, a native of Niceville, Fla., who spent most of her college years in Ithaca, New York, would feel out of place in the windswept South Plains, the new addition to the faculty in Texas Tech University’s Department of Landscape Architecture couldn’t disagree more.” (more…)

Talked into a campus tour by her best friend, Ashley Larkin visited Texas Tech University as a high school senior with few expectations. “But from the moment I set foot on campus, I fell in love,” the Houston native said. “The friendly atmosphere and the faculty immediately won me over.” (more…)

Keeping food safe is more than a passing practical exercise in preparing meals for Mindy Brashears, Ph.D., (’92, BS, food technology) associate professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences. Food safety is a passion for the microbiologist because of its universal impact. (more…)

Both literally and figuratively, Shaikh Rahman has traveled many miles from his family’s three-acre Bangladesh farm to the halls of academia here at Texas Tech University. Introduced early to applied economics, Rahman said that even before he was old enough to realize it, his father’s rice, jute and vegetable farm introduced him to the “Cobweb Phenomenon.” (more…)

Jenna Jones was standing in front of a packed audience of friends and faculty last week at Texas Tech University’s ritzy Merket Alumni Center, when the 22-year-old senior learned she was the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources’ 2009 Outstanding Student of the Year. (more…)

After more than two decades of working, studying and conducting research in the United States, Ukraine native Olga Murova is no stranger to American-style academia. Still, she remembers distinct differences between the South Plains and her former Eastern European homeland. (more…)

Environmentally ‘green’ long before it was a beltway buzzword, Larry Butler is an old school conservationist. The owner of Weatherford-based Texas Legacy Lands, a ranch and wildlife management service, honed his stewardship of the environment early as an undergraduate at Texas Tech University some three decades ago when where he was a member of what was the plant identification team. (more…)

Here on the wind-swept plains it turns out that Mike Leach, the offensive guru who built Texas Tech into a national football contender, isn’t the only championship caliber coach on campus. Just a mile away from the Red Raiders’ upgraded stadium, is the office of Ryan Rathmann, coach of Tech’s premier livestock judging team. (more…)

While Colorado offers some of the nation’s — and world’s — most dramatic landscapes, Kasie Pigg, a native of Pueblo, Colo., chose the wide-open spaces of the Texas South Plains to be her university home. (more…)