How one Texas Tech student turned foster care experience into a calling to change lives across West Texas
For nearly a decade, Monsoon founder and local entrepreneur Caleb Monroe had built a life he loved: a thriving business, a marriage of 14 years, and five children. College was not part of the plan. Then, in 2022, he and his wife began fostering.
What he encountered reshaped everything.
“I quickly realized how broken and strained our foster care system was,” Monroe said. “Our region has incredible people doing the work, but there simply aren’t enough safe, stable foster homes.”
That realization led the couple to launch Gethsemane Foster Initiative, a nonprofit focused on recruiting, training, and retaining foster families across West Texas. It also led Monroe back to the classroom and to Texas Tech, where he enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Human Sciences program to gain the tools to help create lasting solutions.
“I didn’t want to just talk about the problems,” Monroe said. “I wanted to understand child development, trauma recovery, and how to change the trajectory of family systems in our region.”
Returning to Texas Tech felt personal. Growing up, Monroe attended Red Raider football games with his dad and always felt connected to the university. “I was honored to become an alum, not just a season ticket holder,” Monroe said. “I couldn’t have picked a better moment to be a Red Raider.”
That same purpose-driven mindset has defined his business journey. Monroe co-founded Monsoon nearly 10 years ago with partner Travis Gibson to help small businesses grow through branding, web design, and marketing without cookie-cutter solutions.
“Too many business owners were being sold products that wouldn’t actually help them grow,” Monroe said. “We decided we would only sell what we’d use ourselves. We serve instead of sell.”
Today, Monsoon has worked with hundreds of businesses across industries, an approach Monroe credits to slowing down, listening closely, and building custom strategies, values he now brings into his academic and nonprofit work.
Foster care, however, remains the driving force behind his goals.
“I wouldn’t be taking 15 hours every semester on top of running a business, leading a nonprofit, and parenting if foster care hadn’t changed me,” Monroe said. “Every child in West Texas deserves a safe home, permanency, and hope.”
In the College of Health & Human Sciences, Monroe found faculty who matched that passion.
“The professors genuinely care,” Monroe said. “Even online, you feel it.”
One moment stands out: a meeting with Interdisciplinary Human Sciences Department Chair Nicole Morelock to discuss graduate school plans, with his one-year-old foster child in tow.
“She sat on the floor with me while he crawled around with Texas Tech squish balls,” Monroe said. “We had a productive meeting, and I left feeling supported as both a student and a foster parent.”
After completing his master’s degree, Monroe plans to pursue a PhD in Family and Consumer Sciences Education or Human Development and Family Sciences. Locally, he is already teaching Trust-Based Relational Intervention classes to educators, social workers, foster parents, and community leaders. Long-term, he hopes to build a skills-based academy for foster youth aging out of care.
“These tools are critical to preventing kids from entering foster care and helping families rebuild trust,” Monroe said.
For prospective students, his message is simple:
“Go to Texas Tech. Give yourself wholeheartedly to your studies,” Monroe said. “Challenge yourself. Find your why. Leave this campus ready to change the area you’re planted in. I wouldn’t be where I am today without Texas Tech and the professors in the College of Health & Human Sciences. Where will your yes take you?”