Some advice for Texas Tech University

Some advice for Texas Tech University

I have been studying in Texas Tech University for 14 months. Tech is a such a fascinating place that I enjoy nearly everything here. In most cases, Tech serves quite well for students, faculty and staff, which could be reflected from the detailed survey. However, I insist on finding something that could be improved for serving clients of our university better. From my point of view, I believe that the hospitality department should establish more convenient stores selling food in different buildings, due to several reasons.

Firstly, broader food service coverage would benefit those students who are busy working. They are more inclined to stay in one building for longer time than others. What’s more, they have far less spare time on average as well. Thus, we could speculate that those students would get more accessible food service located in their buildings from the two facts. In brief, more accessibility means less time for those students to get food and more time available concentrating on their business. We don’t need to worry about the limited quality flavor of food in convenient stores as well, since those students would care more for the accessibility than the quality of food. That’s a trade-off which is quite easy to understand.

Secondly, broader food service coverage would create more positions which could benefit students and residents in need. There are never too many positions for them. There would be a lot of students with lower income in need of working in school, since Tech is a public university with low tuition and fees. In this case those students tend to choose Tech at the beginning. Moreover, positions added would particularly benefit international students, as international students hold the kind of student visa that limits weekly working hours and places. In addition, working in school means better guarantee of safety for them.

Thirdly, we have to admit that the current coverage of food service is not enough in Tech. I found that there are only 1/4 of the buildings with food service after checking the map. However, establishing a convenient food store doesn’t require much investment. For most of the potential stakeholders, they only need a close place to enjoy readily delivered food, but not high-quality ones. We only need several refrigerators and one microvan for each store. We don’t need trained staff; in addition, all food sold could be enjoyed readily.

In conclusion, broadening food service via establishing more convenient stores is economically feasible, and it could benefit a lot of students and residents definitely. Why not have a try for that?

(Jin Hao)

Push the community

Push the Texas Tech Community

I am a new international student in Texas Tech University (TTU). TTU is in Lubbock, one of small cities in Texas. Some people argue that Lubbock is the most boring city in Texas, because there is no entertainment place for people to have fun. But I don’t agree with it. There are many famous and exquisite restaurants where we can have dinner with friends, such as, Texas Roadhouse, Yuyo Restaurant, and Little Panda, etc. The most exciting thing is that, there are many amazing entertainment places in Texas Tech community. The Student Union offers us a convenient and relaxed environment to enjoy dinner; the Recreation center provides a multi-function gymnasium, where we can play basketball, badminton, table tennis and do such activities; the Leisure Pool gives us a comfortable room for swimming. Overall, Texas Tech community makes our lives more rich and colorful. However, to improve the quality of service of Texas Tech community, there are still some suggestions as follows.

The first service in the Texas Tech community which should be enhanced is the school bus service system. The school bus provides both on-campus and off-campus bus services for all TTU students. There are many TTU students living near the campus, which means that they can just walk to attend classes or some entertainment places. However, there is still a vast number of TTU students living far away from school. It seems that they can go to school every day by bus. But it is impossible for them because of the unreasonable opening time. From the Campus Bus Service website, Red Raider Route is servicing from 7:25am to 7:17pm; Double T Route is servicing from 7:10am to 6:59pm; Masked Rider Route is servicing from 7:25am to 7:21pm, etc. That is to say, the school bus won’t offer service during the night. It is really a very big problem for most of graduate students who don’t have any cars, because most graduate students will stay in the lab to do research, especially teaching assistants and research assistants. If there is no school bus during the night, they cannot return home. Therefore, this phenomenon results in the fact that most students who don’t have cars return home before the last school bus, rather than do research in their labs. This phenomenon will also result in the fact that the research progress is not fast, because many students stay at home rather than do research in the lab during night. I would like to recommend that the school bus should be servicing during the night.

The second one I would like to talk about is the opening time of the Student Union. It is well-known that Student Union has flexible spaces for TTU students to accommodate any type of meeting and enjoy the time. Furthermore, there are 22 meeting rooms located on the first and second floor, which departments can use for any type of meetings and activities. Nevertheless, there are various stores where we can buy any foods and drinks, e.g., beef hamburger, pizza, and potato chips etc. However, there is a problem. None of stores are open during the night. That is to say, the Student Union doesn’t offer food at night. Many people won’t have food during the night, but others will. Therefore, I just suggest that some stores had better offer food and drink for TTU students at night, in case some students are hungry.

The final suggestion is about the park during game day. Game day is an exciting and amazing time we can enjoy and have fun with families and friends. However, it is a disaster for some TTU students and teachers who are not interested in football, because there is not enough parking space for them to park cars. Although there are some parking spaces for students and teachers to park during game day, it is not enough. This phenomenon results in the fact that there are seldom students and teachers going to school to do research during game day. Therefore, I hope that there will be more parking spaces for TTU students and teachers in the future.

Based on the reasons mentioned above, I would tend to argue that school or relevant organizations should enhance the service quality of the school bus system, Student Union and the parking availability during the game day. I believe that with the help of the school and relevant organizations, the level of service in Texas Tech community will be improved, Texas Tech community will be better, the lives of TTU students will be more exciting and amazing.

(Yiting Dong)

Survey Experiences

Survey Experience

Last week, I received several surveys in the class. I need to ask TTU students to finish these surveys, at least 6 American males and 6 American females. It is exactly a big problem about how to get data. Firstly, I tended to look for TTU students, who were available and helped me to accomplish the surveys, in my department, Mechanical Engineering. That is because there are many TTU students coming to this building to attend class, and leaving after class every day. I argued that I could look for TTU students who were available when they came and left. However, I just spent a whole morning to finish only 4 surveys. The efficiency was really low, because most of the TTU students who came to attend class were not available since the class was beginning. Therefore, I didn’t believe this method was useful. Then, I decided to go to the Student Union to finish the survey, where flexible spaces are provided for TTU students to accommodate any type of meetings or activities. There is a vast number of TTU students having fun or taking any activities at Student Union every day. After I entered the gate of the Student Union, I began to look for some TTU students to finish the survey. Fortunately, all of TTU students were very friendly and nice, and I finished all of rest of the surveys at Student Union with the help of TTU students.

By the way, there are two little troubles during the period of doing survey. The first one is that one of females did not understand what parental leave was. Of course, I made a brief introduction about parental leave for her. The other is that, one of males says that he just had done the same survey. It is totally possible, because our subject should cover at least 320 TTU students, which is not a small proportion of TTU students. Finally, I finished the survey part and got the valuable data by the deadline successfully.

However, some TTU students made comments about the survey. As for Question 5 for Black Lives Matter, a male recommended that racism was a problem rather than a big problem. Therefore, we should add a choice to distinguish whether or not, racism is a problem. As for Question 8 on Parental Leave, a female recommended that this question was invalid, because anyone can vote for anything. (Yiting Dong)

How I got 13 surveys

In the academic writing esl5315 course, we made an agreement that each person should obtain 13 surveys from Texas Tech University students, 6 for American males, 6 for American females, and one for ourselves. Half of them I acquired from student union building and randomly asked students who were willing to do the survey. Most of the people were nice and liked to do the survey. Just a few of them complained a little about the length of the survey but still did the survey. None of them rejected me for filling in the survey. Overall, they were very nice. One of my friends helped me to collect the other half part of the surveys. Being a teaching assistant in hospitality and retail management, he knows many undergraduate and graduate students. He introduced me to many his friends in his department and they all were very nice and willing to do the survey for me. I didn’t receive many comments from the participants. The most frequently asked question was that "what was this survey for"? "It sounds interesting and cool". In brief, it is a good and special experience to ask strangers to do the surveys.(Cheng Ta)

　 Survey Experience

I collected my data in the student union in Texas Tech. I targeted the students who were sitting in groups, and were having a conversation. These group of students seemed to be more relaxed; that is why I thought they would be more willing to fill in the questionnaire.

I asked them if they wanted to participate in a survey about social media, parental leave, and Black Lives Matter. Their response was very friendly and they were actually happy to fill in the questionnaire. While filling the first part of the questionnaire (Social media), they were laughing and blaming each other for using Facebook so much, some were mentioning that they actually feel embarrassed to be addicted to social media, and they do not know how much time exactly they spend on it. However, when they started to fill in the second and third part of the questionnaire, they were quiet and more serious; no one was making jokes anymore.

I did not want the students to fill the survey in a rush, so during the time the participants were filling in the questionnaire, I waited in a corner and I kept my distance. By far everything regarding distributing and collecting the questionnaires went smoother and better than expected. There was only one exception, and that was one of the female participants who took almost 30 minutes to fill in the questionnaire, and I think at some point she wanted to leave without filling it. All the other students took about maximum of 10-15 minutes to fill in the survey.

After gathering the data from these two groups, I asked 6 other females who were sitting in groups of two, but none of them agreed to fill in the questionnaire. These six students mentioned that they either wanted to study, or they were about to leave the SUB. (Sahar)

Survey Experience

I had a wonderful experience doing the survey on Social media, Parental leave and Black Lives Matter. To be honest, it was not difficult finding people for my survey. Most of them were staff members and students from the Learning Resource Center, Preston Smith Library at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. This is the place where I work as a student assistant in 3D-printing. For my last four surveys, I chose to go to the Main Library of Texas Tech University. There were two male students who turned down the survey as they were running late for their class and had to finish an assignment. Overall the people were friendly and enjoyed doing the survey. My colleagues who work at different shifts completed the survey and placed it on my desk with a sticky note thanking me. Also, the people at the library were friendly too. (Abhishek Kumar)

Experience During Survey

We, a group of students from ESL class of Texas Tech University, agreed on writing individual paper on “Social Media”. To write the paper, we chose our own hypotheses and concurred on a few generalized questions for Texas Tech students to reflect their opinions and ideas regarding the topic. For the collection of data, every student was assigned to collect the answers of those questions from at least 1 international and 12 United States (6 males and 6 females) students from TTU. For my case, I chose TTU library and Mechanical Engineering Department as the best place to look for students in their leisure time (i.e. lunch time). The reason for choosing Mechanical Engineering Department was due to hanging around there for most of my time. Accordingly, the library was chosen due to availability of students. Consequently, I engaged myself for accomplishing my part for the survey. Most of them tried their best to give the honest answer. The most interesting experience was: some of the students added some comments, if they thought it differently. Altogether, I had no trouble at all with those participants which made me very grateful. (Minhaz Ur Rahman)

About Survey

For carrying out survey about the topics Social Media, Parental leave and Black Lives Matter, first our class of ESL 5315 course shortlisted a few questions and agreed upon them unanimously. Each student was required to take a minimum of thirteen surveys which included the student carrying out the survey, six American males and six American female Texas Tech students. I carried out this survey at South West Collection library at TTU where I used to work as student assistant and at Chemical Engineering Department. In my surveys five out of six males were White American and one was African American. Also, five out of six females were White American and one was Asian American, although there was no question asked regarding the ethnicity of students surveyed. Students were very friendly and happy to fill out the survey regarding topics mentioned. One of the African girls said that the survey was partial because it was supposed to be filled out by American students. She was eager to fill it out so I surveyed her as well. Most of the students had questions about Parental Leave and it seemed that they were less aware about this topic. (Pradeep Vyawahare)

Survey experience

I collected 12 questionnaires (6 from males and 6 from females) in Texas Tech University library on a Sunday afternoon. In the beginning, I encountered some trouble. When I finally encouraged myself to approach a desk with four male students and asked if they had time to do a survey, they turned me down because they did not really have time and needed to do their homework. Then I turned to a nearby table with three female students, who also turned me down with similar reason. I went around the library, and the students were really concentrated on their study. It was so embarrassing for me to interrupt them. So I went back to my seat, depressed. I almost gave up before I told myself, “why not give it another try?”. This time, I approached four males who seemed not so focused and nicely asked if they had time to help me out. To my surprise, they agreed! This gave me much more confidence! Then I asked politely, confidently and tried to be more professional, to another three girls and get their help. In the end, I got 12 questionnaires completed. The students were nice overall, although some refused me at the beginning, but with smiles and they probably indeed did not have time. Among the people I surveyed, there was a black male student. I was afraid he would feel offended and refuse to answer because there were some questions for Black Lives Matter. To my astonishment, he did not show any unhappiness and finished the questionnaire. Two female students said they liked Social Media and Parental Leave parts; the questions are well devised and are very interesting. (Rui)

Survey Experience

This is the first time that I conducted surveys. I went to the SUB right after our class on last Tuesday. I thought that it was a good place, but I realized that maybe it was not, at least for me, as soon as I got inside of the building. Most students were there having food or trying to get some food. I did not want to disturb people enjoying food since it is hard to hold a burger on one hand and hold a pen on the other hand and take a survey. So I went to another area where most students were resting instead of eating. I wanted to go to a table with a group of students so that I could get several surveys filled out at the same time, but I did not want to disturb people chatting with each other. Finally, I decided to talk with a girl sitting at the long chairs besides the wall. She was playing on her cellphone by herself, so I thought that it was fine to disturb her. I asked: “Do you have a few minutes to take a survey?” She raised her head and looked at me. I bet that she was thinking who I was, where I came from, whether I was a student, why I was doing a survey, and whether I was a bad person. It was possible that she just watched some bad news on her cellphone. She said: “I am Ok.” So I said: “That’s all right.” I turned to another girl sitting beside her who was also playing on cellphone and asked: “Do you mind taking a survey?” She looked tired and said: “I don’t think I have time.” I said: “Ok.”

I got depressed. I felt that it was hard to conduct surveys in the SUB because there were too many people in the SUB and any person even they were not TTU students could get inside of the SUB. The two girls might not feel safe enough, or I might just look like a bad person. So I thought that it might be easier to go to Math building which is the building that I am in almost every day. I felt that Math building was the safest building at TTU and I knew a lot of people in that building. I got out of the SUB. Surprisingly, a boy asked: “Do you want to touch my dog?” I looked at him. Oh, there was indeed a little puppy in his arms. Another boy said: “That is not his dog.” Anyway, they were a group of students promoting their fraternity out of the door of the SUB. I asked them whether they could fill out a survey. Two of them said yes. A third boy asked me what the survey was about. Then I gave him a survey to fill out, too. While he was filling it out, he asked: “What the hell is parental leave?” I explained to him, and he got it.

After I went back to my department, the surveys got filled out fast and smoothly. I saw two girls doing homework in the hallway and asked them whether they had time to fill out the survey, and they agreed. I also asked a boy who was also studying at the same place, but he said that he did not have time. Another boy who was sitting outside a classroom and waiting for class helped me to fill out one survey.

That was what I did on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I brought some candies with me and gave students who helped me candies. You could not image how happy they were when they got candies. And as a result, I felt happy, too. It was hard to find American girls in my department, but I walked through all the offices and finally found one. We met at the orientation meeting of our department in the beginning of the semester. She filled out one survey. And a boy who was sitting beside her table also agreed to fill out one survey. So I got three girls and five boys to fill out the survey. I saw another graduate student who was microwaving his food. He was happy to fill one out since we met several times in our department. One of my friends in our department also took the survey. And while I was looking for this friend, a Chinese guy asked me what I was doing, and he volunteered to fill out a survey. A girl who was working at the main office took the survey. A girl who was studying in the tutoring center took a survey. And another girl who was studying in her office took a survey. She asked whether it was Ok to choose two answers, and I said it was fine and it was better if you could choose the best answer. She also said that for question number two in Black Lives Matter part, African-Americans was not a race and should be changed. Finally, I took one survey. So I have got surveys from eight boys and seven girls in total including seven American boys and six American girls now.

In conclusion, I think it is easy to start with the person that has met you before. And it is better to bring candies with me. One difficulty is that most of the surveys were filled out by white students since I am afraid that the last part of the survey might make black students feel uncomfortable. But I did try, and the boy said that he did not have time. Overall, conducing this survey was a good experience for me. (Yu)

Paragraph about collecting

I found 6 female students and 6 male students in Livermore Centre and Chemical Engineering Building which is located at the north part of TTU campus.

I distributed 8 pieces of survey sheets to undergraduate students whose lab teaching assistant is me when they had a break in the Chemical Engineering Building. Most of them were pleased to do me a favor; that accounts for the reason that I am the TA, personally. They took short time while filling out the first page, Social Media part. However, they consumed a longer time for the second page, Parental Leave and Black Lives Matter part. I noticed one black-skinned student wrinkled his brows in concentration when reading the Black Lives Matter part. What’s more, students like to discuss questions on the first page where Social Media questions lies. I think the strategy of putting the questions of social media first works well; it helps students’ relief and helps them let their guard down. A problem came to me that 6 out of 8 surveys were from male students. We have had to accept the truth that the ratio of men to women in the engineering department is pretty much higher compared to other majors.

Next step, I needed to find four more female students to complete the survey. I had a mind to choose girls in Livermore Center. I found four girls who were sitting in the porch and talking with each other. After I explained the purpose of our survey, two of them refused politely due to schedule of class. The other two girls were delighted to take the assignment and completed it quickly. I found another two girls outside the kitchen room. One of them who was up to graduate said she cared more about ‘what kind of things can social media benefit for your career’. She insisted social media was useless for a person who is struggling with hunting for a job. It’s better to take more time to attend job fairs, meet with people and develop one's own relationships. (Tianyu)

Experience of collecting the data

I hadn’t started collecting the data of our survey until this Monday. At the beginning I went to the department of Chemical Engineering building. I looked for people who weren’t struggling with the homework or project and this strategy worked well. A male student accepted to help me and everything went well. Then I headed for the engineering center and got help from a male and a female student. The first refusal happened outside the chemistry building and I thought the male student was not busy at all at that time. However, more than 80% of the people wanted to help me and I got 13 results easily. Only one female student asked me about the definition of parental leave. (Jin Hao)

001 Survey Experiences

The Welfare of a Graduate (PhD) Student at Texas Tech University

Nothing is more exciting than when you get to realize that it’s real and not just a dream that you have got a scholarship opportunity to pursue your post graduate studies from a university in the United States. A university like Texas Tech is ranked amongst the top 100 universities in the world, and thus millions in the world have a wish to join such a university, but just a few hundreds get such an opportunity. In most of the cases, the largest percentage of graduate students are experienced and mature, and with independent families.  The expectations of the student, relatives, and friends are always very high, and they do anything to raise money required for air ticket, and initial rental fees while in the United States. Most people even sell some assets like land to ensure that they have the required funding for their travel, in case they didn’t have it. Most graduate students have jobs that they leave back home to pursue further education and to better their lives from a first world country. Many thus leave the jobs, families, and friends.  On arrival, imaginations and memories of what they left behind do not just phase out immediately, but rather gradually. However, the life of a PhD graduate student ought to be given more attention to help them become more refined, stronger, focused, enthusiastic, optimistic, productive, and useful to the community from which they come. My arguments if the subsequent paragraphs support the need for a more improved support toward the welfare of a PhD student at Texas Tech, a research based university.

I have spent two months so far at Texas Tech.  I have realized that a graduate PhD student at Texas Tech University is very busy with specifically academic work yet his/her welfare is not given stringent attention. PhD students do not have time to do any other side activities lest they become ineffective in academia. Their busy nature of life is however intrinsic, and hardly unavoidable. But on the other hand, it is good for instilling into them time management abilities, dedication towards achieving set targets, and general positive attitude change towards a wide range of life aspects. The problem this nature of life poses if not highly regarded, is unprecedented poor living standards that might directly impact the students’ academic performance negatively. I therefore advocate for robust, comprehensive, and sustainable policies aiming at improving the livelihood and welfare of a graduate PhD student on a scholarship opportunity at Texas Tech. There must be a difference between a PhD student and an undergraduate student. A PhD student is more or less an instructor in the making, and a researcher. Avenues should be put in place to have these students more empowered and their esteem strengthened given their busy nature of life.

 As earlier described, PhD students are quite old enough and in most cases above 27 years of age with lots of responsibilities which they end up neglecting due to a drop in finances during the course of a PhD study. At this age, most have families for which they have responsibilities to look after, and as well as establishing their lives both financially and materially.  Coupled with the above, it is pertinent to note that most majors for PhD students take not less than a period of 5 years of serious concentration. This rather means a fully dedicated student will spend five years without financial and material stability. Such a student hesitates to go back home, especially if he/she has been in the United States for over 5 years but yet are older and poor. Therefore, avenues should be put in place to ensure that there is a difference in the life of this student, not only in academia, but in all other life aspects. For instance, most PhD students have job opportunities from which they get some monthly stipends to sustain and support their living while studying. However, the stipend is in most cases consumed in expenses of rent, paying for extra credits at the university, paying for health insurance, etc. The university should put in place avenues for students on scholarships to ensure that their expenses with respect to the university are minimal or eradicated.

Lastly, I wish to category state that in general, there is always low productivity from a less motivated community. We need to ensure high production levels are maintained and improved at Texas Tech University. There is a need to set production targets every year and assess the dependency parameters while establishing avenues of countering unfavorable the parameters. These parameters can as well be used to guide the formulation, and regulation of policies that I talked about in the first paragraph.  The university avails scholarship opportunities to hundreds of students with the expectation of high productivity in academics, research, and innovation.  However, the largest percentage of those enrolled has not performed to the expectations of the university. Many have withdrawn from their courses, while others have finalized without any relevant work that benefits the university.  Literally, my expectation is that more students should be able to finalize with the highest percentage having relevant contribution to the university in research and innovation. I argue that this level of productivity largely depends on the student self-esteem, commitment, and enthusiasm towards whatever he/she is doing. These in turn depend on attitude which is entirely determined by the welfare.

In my conclusion, therefore, if the above as described in the paragraphs are put into practice, Texas Tech University will be deemed to be the most empowering, but also a highly productive with empirical evidence in research areas that practically impact human life and technology positively. I believe that productivity is dependent upon the welfare of the stakeholders. I therefore hypothesize that the better the welfare of all, the higher the commitment and the rate of productivity.

Judas Tadeo

Travel funding policy problems in Texas Tech

Travel funding policy problems in Texas Tech

National conferences and seminars provide a great context for students in the United States to promote their ideas and communicate with other scholars. These events also serve as a strong motivation for students to present their works and develop professional skills. Texas Tech University does a good job of informing and motivating students to take part in those events. However, Texas Tech policy of travel funds makes it difficult for students to join those conferences. This essay discusses the problems associated with travel fund policies in Texas Tech.

Travel funds in Texas Tech are reimbursable only after the students make their travel plans, and participate in the conference. This policy leaves students with a high amount of payment prior to the conference, meaning that the students have to pay for conference registration, ticket fees, hotel fees, and transportation before and while traveling. This factor discourages many students from participating in conferences. This problem gets highlighted especially for international students who do not have social security numbers and cannot have access to credit cards. For this group of students, it is absolutely difficult to manage to travel for conferences.

The second problem with the travel fund policies is that getting reimbursement even after traveling is not guaranteed. This means that even if students pay for the whole trip by themselves, there is a possibility that they won’t get any reimbursement. Travel funds are first come, first served, and funding resources are limited. This policy forces students to apply for travel funding months before their actual conference travel date. Students are already busy with coursework, and when they finally come up with presentable material for publishing in a conference, it is already too late and travel funding is not available anymore.

The final problem with the travel funding policy is its complicated requirements. Students are required to take three sessions of special “funding for travel” classes prior to getting a funding. These three sessions have to be taken before the travel date but the problem is that these sessions are not always offered. As a result, it becomes difficult for students to meet travel funding requirements. Secondly, students have to be registered for courses at the time of the travel. Most of the students do not take summer courses and actually, summer is the perfect time for students to attend conferences without the worry of their coursework responsibilities, but this policy makes summer conferences impossible to attend.

Texas Tech is a generous school with great resources and potential; however, for a great school, it has restrictive policies in conference travel funding. Conferences, especially if combined with traveling options, are great motivations for students to promote their projects. This essay suggests that reimbursement policies and also funding requirement applications need to be reconsidered. It would be perfect if every student could receive a travel funding package in the beginning of the semester, and would be responsible for returning it in case they did not present and attend in any national conferences or seminars. This suggested policy would help both students’ academic progress and Texas Tech’s reputation as a research school. (Sahar)

Texas Tech to Better Texas Tech

Texas Tech to Better Texas Tech

         Texas Tech University, located in Lubbock, is a popular choice among students from United States and other parts of the world. Although my fourteen months experience with the university has been a decent one, I have faced quite a few problems and challenges during my journey. Here, I have identified some major issues which the university needs to think over. 

         Transportation poses a popular problem that Texas Tech students face. The public transport in and around the campus is inadequate. The frequency of buses, both within and around the campus, needs to be increased. Students have to wait every now and then for buses and doing so they lose valuable time. For instance, I had a tough time throughout the summer when I had to wait in scorching heat for buses to go to my department and work. This resulted in rashes and red bumps on my skin. The busses running during morning hours are way too crowded and there is no place to sit. Standing in a moving bus is dangerous and can result in injuries when sudden brakes are applied. Safe Ride is a service provided through Student Service fees for taxi pickup anywhere in the Tech campus and delivery to one’s residence. A lot of students do not have a car and need to rely on this service. To be honest, this is a highly unreliable service and the administration needs to think about it. The service center network is always busy as there are thousands of people calling at the same time. A number of times I had to wait for hours and on some instances even walk back home.  

         Texas Tech University students also face problems with making new friends. A university is a new phase of one’s life and with a new chapter comes new faces. There are various student associations and organizations around the campus who can take the initiative of weekly open meetings and get-togethers. This will help a lot of students to socialize, make friends and share cultural knowledge. Generally international students find it difficult to interact with Americans because of cultural differences. Such social meetings will help them open up and share their feelings. The university should start a campaign along with the Lubbock community in which they assign two to three local families to each international student. These families can invite students for dinner and day trips. Being a part of an American family while studying at Texas Tech will not just help us in adjusting to living in Lubbock but know the American community better. It is due to the lack of friends that I often feel homesick and miss my close ones. Such events will make Texas Tech a more likeable place and the students will feel a lot more comfortable.

         A major problem that affects Texas Tech University is Campus Parking. For the seventh-straight year, Texas Tech University saw an increase in the enrollment of the number of students with a 2.1 percent growth from Fall 2014 to Fall 2015 but the parking space remains the same throughout. On weekdays, one has to be very lucky to find a parking space near C1 parking (beside Jones AT & T stadium) during afternoons. It is the closest parking lot to the College of Engineering. This makes it difficult to do our daily job when there is no legal space to park our cars. Distant parking are allotted to students which does not allow them to park closer to their classes. On Game Day and other special occasions the Parking Services need to make specific arrangements for people who have to go to their respective departments for work. Texas Tech University Transportation and Parking Services need to reconfigure their parking policies so that it assists the students, faculty and staffs. 

         Clearly, all the three issues discussed above need to be addressed if we want our university to be a better place. Firstly, transportation is a matter of grave concern, and we have seen how it can affect the safety and productivity of a student. Secondly, socialization is necessary for students to stay happy, and the Tech administration needs to take steps in helping students on this issue. Lastly, the Texas Tech University Transportation and Parking Services has to make serious changes in its campus parking policy in order to make life easy for the entire Tech community.

(Abhishek Kumar)

Essay : Pushing Lubbock Community

Essay: Public Transport

Transportation has been integral part of social development for humans from a long time ago. The invention of the wheel revolutionized the way of transportation and improved the efficiency of moving goods and people from one place to another. In early days, migration for humans was important because changes in environmental conditions required people to move from one region to another. Since then improvement in transportation technology has dramatically improved traveling of people and goods. In the modern world people easily use buses, cars and airplanes to travel in different parts of the world. However, the way people use transportation is not completely efficient. Especially in the United States, usually people use their own vehicle to travel from one place to another, which makes them more independent, but also makes the transport inefficient. I would like to provide few reasons why public transport is important and in the United States, if tax payers money is properly spent on designing a better public transportation system, then how it can be more efficient than current system.

Public transportation saves fuel and is more energy efficient than individual transportation. Talking specifically about Texas Tech, most of the faculty, staff and students use their own vehicle to travel to campus. So each person using their own vehicle spends fuel to commute. But if there is an efficient bus service network in Lubbock city, then a bus can fit six to eight times more people than a car. Also if fewer people use their individual vehicles, there will be less traffic on the road, which will make transportation faster. European countries like France, Spain and Netherlands are good examples of efficient public transportation systems.

Public transport is better for the environment, because current vehicles run on carbon based fuels. Exhaust gases from vehicles is mainly CO₂, CO and SO₂ which are greenhouse gases and are responsible for the overall increase in earth’s temperature. If a greater number of people use individual cars, more fuel is used and more greenhouse gases are released in the air. However, if Lubbock has a good public transport network then this pollution can be reduced. The governments of big cities like Beijing and New Delhi have made rules which allow odd and even numbered vehicles to travel on alternate days, and they have observed significant reduction in pollution levels in both cities. This gives us the idea that an effective public transport can considerably reduce pollution.

Public transport is more affordable and for some people a necessary source of transportation. Students who live far from campus either have to take help from their friends or have to drive their own car to campus. Affording a car is not easy and further cost is added due to fuel consumption and hence it puts more burden on the students to bear the cost of education, living and transportation. However, with an effective transportation network in Lubbock, students can easily afford the travel because the cost of the trip is shared by whole Lubbock community and is considerably lower. 

If we consider all the benefits of public transport in to account, we can conclude that there is substantial room for improvement in the public transport network in Lubbock. If an effective network is developed by city community, it will be more economical for students. There will be less traffic on the road and less pollution of the environment. I would like to push the Lubbock community to take action in the direction so that public transport network can be improved. (Pradeep Vyawahare)

Time to Forget about College Rankings

Time to Forget about College Rankings

It’s easy for people to find various college rankings online each fall. It gradually becomes a unique guideline for prospective students applying for a university or college. In my opinion, college rankings only partially describe the level of universities, and hence, it’s time to push the university community to forget about college rankings.

College rankings cannot bring equivalent benefits for enrolled students. Most perspective students refer to a bunch of college rankings to find an appropriate college or university corresponding to their level of SAT scores or GPA. However, enrolled students don't realize that the rankings are meaningless when they want to accept a qualified education along with the ranking. For example, a top-50 university does not ensure students a top-50 educational quality definitely. The main purpose for most undergraduate students is to find a job. Obviously, the university doesn’t set up an output for fresh graduates to find a vocational position where the payoff is equivalent to college rankings.

College rankings may blur the initial purpose of education. The basis of an education is culture. However, universities would be prompted to pursue better rankings by means of manipulation. For example, universities would choose pumping out more research and citation, which make a great contribution to college rankings, instead of teaching. In this way, a university will convert to a research-oriented institute where the ratio of graduate students to undergraduates is high. In this case, the investment in the undergraduate education program would be inefficient, which has a negative effect on education.

College rankings are not accurate. As I mentioned above, teaching, research and citations account for the greatest part of the total score of college ranking. Grades on teaching are mostly dependent on research outcome; however, teaching itself is hard to grade. Individuals have their own criteria towards evaluating teaching; different lecturers would also lead to teaching quality variety. What’s more, ranking of teaching can hardly judge whether students are effectively educated or not. For example, a student may have good performance on an exam because of self-learning, that insufficiently demonstrates a college has a good education quality.

While college rankings are widely adopted to evaluate reputation and performance of universities, personally, they only cover a trace amount of the rating that determines how universities stand. It’s not prominent for college community to overestimate the value of the college rankings. (Tianyu)

Push the University

Push the University -Essay 2  

             The food is the first and the most important need of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, especially when it comes to the young people and college students. Texas Tech University is characterized by different aspects. For example, the  diversities in different aspects, local and international students, different student services, very attractive landscape, and very high organization of the distribution of the faculties. Moreover, having the diversity and good quality of the food service in the university is good evidence that the management of the university is caring much about the students and delivering a good service that helps them in their learning process.  However, the high prices of the food services are very challenging to the students. Most of the restaurants in the university have unreasonable prices for the food or the drinks as well, because, as we know, the students have a tight budget, and they have other high expenses. Moreover, the food is a basic requirement for all people in general and the students specifically. Students spend most of their time in the university either taking classes or studying with their friends. Therefore, the food services should be reasonable and accessible for the most of the students. Stressing logical solutions, we can propose two solutions. The first is to open the space for new restaurants, and the second food truck solution.  

              The first  is open the space for new restaurants and have new regulations for the new restaurants to have good prices, which will make the other restaurants decrease their prices, because it will be  a chance for competition among the new restaurants and the old one. Unfortunately, this solution requires more space for these restaurants, or having food trucks in the university.  

          They would Allow food truck owners to get inside the university, which would be the cheapest option in Lubbock, and organize this chance within a regulations and certain times; for example, 3 days per week, this solution is very practical and useful for students. Moreover it is cool idea that students can know more about food trucks culturally, because the food truck has a cultural dimension here in Lubbock.  This means, in this solution, you stress on two dimensions; the first one is the food pricing. The second is the cultural dimension, which is that you can identify some cultural aspect in an indirect way.  

          To conclude, students, organizations in the university, and student unions should stress these issues that affect students’ lives in the university. Having new restaurants makes a positive competition that affects student interest positively.  Food trucks are one of the best solutions that help students to decrease their daily expenses for food and drinks. I believe that the student organizations should build communication channels for sharing the students’ challenges with their university life. (Yousef)