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What's Your Story?
They say every Red Raider has a story.
Get ready to get up close and personal to all aspects of our great university with our new "What It Feels Like" series.
What It Feels Like ...
To Serve and Protect the Texas Tech Community
By Sergeant Chris Fox as told to Cory Chandler
It’s 7:30 p.m. We’re doing 65 mph down Texas Tech Parkway. On our way to an accident with possible injuries. Lights on the cruiser fling red and blue ahead, painting the night a roiling purple.
Silence in the car except for radio squawk. Sergeant Chris Fox, with the Texas Tech Police Department, slows at a red light, checks for coming cars, slams the accelerator again.
This is the third time Fox has flipped his car lights on in less than an hour , but that’s the job...that's his nights. One stop after another approaching open windows in the dark. No telling who’s inside. As the old joke goes, policing is 90 percent boredom and 10 percent adrenaline – or "sheer terror," as Fox quips.
To Coach the Lady Raider Basketball Team
By Kristy Curry as told to Cory Chandler
Game day is no time for sleeping in. It’s the day Coach Kristy Curry looks forward to the most. It begins around 6:20 a.m., when she gets her daughters ready for school. After that, the morning is much the same as any other. She spends a lot of time on recruiting and returning phone calls. Sending e-mails, writing personal notes, catching up on how her recruits’ teams faired. Grabs some lunch around noon and heads to the team’s shoot-around.
To Ride Hell-Bent for Leather Across a Football Field For the First Time
By Kevin Burns as told to Cory Chandler
As the 2007-08 Masked Rider, Kevin Burns leads the Red Raiders onto the football field during home games and celebrates touchdowns with a mad dash down the sidelines. He made his first run during Texas Tech’s first home game of the 2007 season against the University of Texas at El Paso.
To Work in the Zone of Alienation
By Robert Baker as told to Cory Chandler
Robert Baker, Horn professor of biology, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the repercussions of radioactive fallout on plants and animals near the Chernobyl disaster site. He first visited Chernobyl in 1994, eight years after a nuclear meltdown decimated an area that was once home to 120,000 people, and has visited more than 20 times since then.
To String 25,000 Holiday Lights
By Kyle Cooper as told to Cory Chandler
Red Raiders enjoy holiday lights each year thanks to the efforts of the Texas Tech Building Maintenance and Construction Section. For three years, Kyle Cooper has made sure all 25,000 lights are strung correctly and working properly. The mechanical superintendent at Texas Tech’s Physical Plant, Cooper oversees months of labor that go into putting Will Rogers in a ring of holiday fire and credits the skill and dedication of Electric Shop employees for making it happen.
To Create the Big Bang Behind Exploding Nanoparticles
By Michelle Pantoya as told to Ben Samples
Few professionals practice the motto, “Safety First,” more than Michelle Pantoya. But then again, few people have the job of detonating highly energetic materials in their workplace. This mechanical engineering professor observes reactions between energetic materials in her Texas Tech laboratory – sometimes with unpredictable results. While working with a unique sample of nanoparticles, Pantoya and her lab assistant, Emily Hunt, came across such a reaction.