Academic Excellence in Research, Education Abounds at Texas Tech University
For more than 75 years, Texas Tech University has served as a beacon of excellence in education and research in the Lone Star State.
Texas Tech is the only university in Texas to receive continuous funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Science Education Program.
The $7.8 million awarded to Texas Tech is the most received by any Texas institution and Texas Tech ranks in the top tier nationally of HHMI-supported research universities. Started in 1992, Texas Tech’s HHMI program allows students to work with faculty research scientists, providing hands-on learning opportunities.
A second student component supports science education scholars and enhances important science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, outreach efforts to help teachers in Lubbock and across the nation. The HHMI Undergraduate Science Education Program Scholars form the cornerstone of the program. The emphasis is on early and continuous involvement by undergraduates in long-term projects in STEM areas. Since 1992, Texas Tech’s program has supported research by 430 students, who have authored about 100 scientific publications and presented their research to more than 300 professional and scientific meetings.
Phi Beta Kappa Status Enriches Degrees
Texas Tech joins the ranks of America’s top schools with its own chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honor society.
The Texas Tech Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa celebrates academic achievement, intellectual integrity and scholarly excellence. Early in each spring semester, eligible junior and senior undergraduates are considered for election to the society.
Texas Tech University was granted the right to house a chapter by vote of the Phi Beta Kappa Society on Oct. 28, 2006. The chapter, one of 276 in at U.S. universities, was installed and its first class of students inducted April 11, 2007.
Honors College Challenges Students
Texas Tech’s Honors College is one of only about 120 nationwide. The college has about 900 undergraduate students, whose SAT scores averaged 1320 in 2009. About 50 students are placed in undergraduate research at Texas Tech or its sister university the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
Students in the Honors College have won prestigious, nationally competitive scholarships such as the William J. Fulbright, Gates-Cambridge and Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships. The majority of Honors graduates are accepted at the most prestigious professional and graduate schools in the nation, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Yale.
Research Library Offers Opportunities
The Texas Tech Library is a member of the Association of Research Libraries and the Greater Western Library Alliance. The library, with its more than 2.1 million volumes, ranks 57th overall among members of the Association of Research Libraries and 35th in journal subscriptions among all U.S. and Canadian research libraries. The University Library also is home to a 3-D Animation Lab and the Digital Media Studio available to everyone on campus. The university is also home to libraries in the College of Architecture and the School of Law.
The Vietnam Archive offers the largest collection of material on the Vietnam War outside of the federal government.
The Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library research collections include rare books, the University Archive, the Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative and the Southwest Collection, which is the regional repository for historical information pertaining to West Texas and the Southwest. The Southwest Collection also houses one of the nation’s most important collections on the Literature of Place -- the James Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World.
Multidisciplinary Research Approach
The university offers a $37 million Experimental Sciences Building designed to serve multidisciplinary teams of faculty researchers and their students.
The 127,810-square-foot building features 50,851 square feet of lab space with a basement and three floors, faculty research laboratories and offices that can be adjusted to match a researchers needs. To enhance the research process, completed lab areas can be designed to bring together researchers from different disciplines and encourage them to collaborate. Working together in the new facility are researchers in biology, chemical engineering, plant and soil sciences, animal and food sciences, computer sciences, economics and geography, biotechnology and imaging.
Spaces have already been created that include a plant growth chamber, a biotechnology and genomics center, a center for biological and geospatial information systems and an imaging center with electron and optical microscopy.
The fact that Texas Tech has a law school and shares a campus with its sister university, the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, gives faculty and students unparalleled opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
