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)

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)  

  

TTU Can Do Better

TTU Can Do Better

Being at Texas Tech University for five years, I think that a lot of things could be improved in the Texas Tech University community. In my opinion, the most important three things that we should work on are: students respecting their instructors, graduate students thinking about their goals, and the whole university community sorting and recycling waste.

First, I would like to push the students to respect their instructors. Attendance of the undergraduate students is problematic, since they sometimes do not come to classes or do not inform the instructors about their absences. In addition, some students leave classes early. Even if instructors are taking attendance, there are students who leave classes immediately after they sign the attendance sheet. Instructors respect students’ time and let them leave on time when the class ends. On the other hand, students should also respect instructors’ time and not leave the class early intentionally. Besides, some students do not care about their grades; some other students care about their grades, but they do not want to actually do the work, so they come up with excuses and intend to miss exams. Many students play on cellphones, check Facebook, text their friends, chat with each other, or sleep during class. As a part-time instructor, I hope that my students can do well in my courses. And I believe that students are the people who would be benefited the most if they respect their instructors.

Second, I would like to push graduate students to think about their goals. A lot of students are going to graduate school nowadays. I suggest graduate students, especially the students who are in doctoral programs, sit down and think what their goals are. Why do they go to graduate school? What do they want to do after getting their degree? Do they like research? Do they like teaching? It is possible that graduate school is a waste of time or at least not the best use of their time if they do not like to do research or teaching. It might be even harder for them to find a job after they get a doctoral degree compared to after they get a master’s degree. One of my friends, who was doing a Ph.D. in Psychology for three years, was contacted by her advisor to inquire whether she likes to do research or not. After thinking deeply and realizing that she does not like research, she decided to graduate with a master’s degree. She is working at a kindergarten and teaching children Chinese now. She told me that she loves her job very much and she is very grateful to her advisor. Another friend of mine was in graduate school for ten years. He finally realized that it is “dangerous” to be in graduate school for such a long time and decided to work on graduation while he was looking for a job. Graduate school is enjoyable and valuable when students have clear goals.

Third, I would like to push the university community to be more aware of sorting and recycling waste. I think the university community is wasting a lot of resources. We need to carry out campaigns of classified garbage recovery and utilization in campus. This can not only economize resources, but also enhance the consciousness of environmental protection of students. Some students and faculty members might want to sort and recycle waste, but they do not have the environment supporting them. To fix this problem, I suggest that we put separate trash cans for different types of trash, so that it is convenient for students and faculty to sort waste and it also makes recycling easy. Thinking green should be an everyday habit. Instead of just planting some trees in Arbor Day, we should take care of our earth every day starting from little things.

In conclusion, respect from undergraduate students, objectives of graduate students, and recycling of waste are the most important three things that we desperately need to work on. None of these can be pushed without the support and cooperation of students, faculty and administrators. The first and the most important thing is to realize the problems before we solve the problems. After we begin to work on these problems, it might be hard to see a quick result at first. However, as long as we keep pushing the university community, we will see great returns in the long run. (Yu Hua)