Up-and-coming rodeo stars from across the country come to Tarleton State University for a chance to compete on the top college rodeo team in the nation. In this episode of Around Texas with Chancellor John Sharp, we meet a few of these young competitors and find out what makes them tick.
Red snapper populations in the Gulf are up, thanks to research being done at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Students looking for a job in the blue economy find what they need at Texas A&M-Galveston. And Chancellor Sharp talks with a biologist researching how an immortal jellyfish might be able to help humans.
With the help of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Texans are producing some excellent wines and whiskeys. Meet the winemakers who are producing award-winning wines that hold their own against products from Napa and France. Plus, learn what it takes to make all-Texas whiskey.
Texas A&M University has been a favorite place for the CIA to recruit agents. Professor Jim Olson is a big reason for that. Jim is a professor at the Bush School, where he teaches courses on intelligence and counterintelligence. He also is a former spy. Chancellor Sharp sat down with Jim to talk about catching spies, Jim’s new book and threats to our national security.
Texas A&M-San Antonio is home to one of the first varsity-level esports teams in Texas. Chancellor Sharp learns about the esports craze and where it’s going. Also, Keller Cox, the head yell leader at Texas A&M, is an aspiring country music singer with a bright future. Keller takes us into a recording session in Austin as he tries to break into the country music industry.
This show is about legacies. You will meet Dr. Al Wagner, a food technology specialist whose contributions included work for NASA. He also served as a volunteer coach for the Texas A&M Rodeo Team. You also will meet Dr. Donny Hamilton, the retired director of the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M. He has done it all from restoring cannons from the Alamo to exploring sunken cities.
Learn about how The Texas A&M Transportation Institute – the premiere transportation research center in the country – is making our roadways safer… and crash-testing a few cars along the way too. Also visit the new Agriculture and Workforce Education Center, or AWEC, where students get trained in high-demand – and high-paying – fields, like welding, plumbing or pipefitting.
Last year, members of the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M worried they might face a year without any Corps activities. Cadets talk about the challenges they faced. Also, Construction Science student Alex Richter built a machine to fabricate COVID barriers designed to make sure students could take classes in person.
EnMed students earn medical degrees and masters’ degrees in engineering from Texas A&M. Graduates will invent new and ultramodern medical devices. Dr. Roderic Pettigrew, head of EnMed, talks with Chancellor Sharp. Also, a small community uses autonomous vehicles to get medications to people who have trouble getting around.
This week, we take you from the stockyards to the table. Learn about a new program for veterinary students at Texas A&M Veterinary College and West Texas A&M. We also meet Southside Market and Barbeque owner Bryan Bracewell from Elgin and hear about how Texas A&M helped his business and others like it.
The VOOM Foundation is a special medical program made up of volunteers, including doctors, nurses and a lot of college students who share a desire to make life better for people in far-away Nigeria. VOOM’s founder - Dr. Vincent Ohaju, a native of Nigeria and a trauma surgeon in Bryan-College Station - and others talk about their involvement in the life-saving program.
The RELLIS campus is a collaborative ecosystem built to foster advanced research, technology development, testing and evaluation, higher education and hands-on career training. Welcome to America's newest center for transformative research and education.
Heroes from the Texas A&M System responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11. Twenty years later, the current leader of Texas A&M Task Force One talks about how the terrorist attacks shaped the team. Also 20 years ago, Aggies organized an effort to show support for first responders by wearing red, white and blue to a football game. In 2021, Aggies organized a similar display.
The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum is now home to the locomotive that carried the late president’s body to College Station. And Harley-Davidson Motorcycles works with trainers from the Texas A&M System to train police on how to tactically maneuver the popular brand of police bikes.
A student-designer from Prairie View A&M and construction science students from Texas A&M collaborate on a museum exhibit that honors African American heritage. And see how the tree-lined campus at Prairie View A&M has been reborn under the leadership of President Ruth Simmons.
Giving new meaning to the term rescue dog, many of the canines that serve on Texas A&M Task Force 1 came from shelters. Meet one of them. Also, students in a unique master’s program at Texas A&M-Kingsville get to use the famous King Ranch as their laboratory.
The Texas A&M Forest Service is working to find new ways to balance a fragile ecosystem and save the Ponderosa Pines of the Davis Mountains in West Texas. Also, up in the Panhandle, a musical production as big and bold as Texas has brought folks to the Palo Duro Canyon for 50 years.
The farrier at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine was kicked in the chest by a horse. Strangely, it might have saved his life. Also, the Texas A&M Forest Service limits wildfire damage with lessons learned from the massive fire in Bastrop in 2011.
Memo Salinas, a senior at Texas A&M, is the university’s first Hispanic Yell Leader. Hear his story of inspiration. Also, meet Dr. Kelly Reyna. He is known as “The Quail Professor.” Hear about his life’s journey which includes time on a nuclear sub and his work as the world’s preeminent quail researcher.
Dr. Edla Sanchez, who runs the top natural toxins research lab in the nation at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, takes us back to Falfurrias High School, where she first discovered her love of science — and she’ll show us some of the deadly snakes she works with every day. Also, the planetarium at Texas A&M University-Commerce has a freshly minted PhD with a love for Astronomy.
Texas A&M System biologists work to eradicate the feral hogs that are tearing up Texas farms, ranches, parks and golf courses. And Dr. Jeff Tomberlin, an entomology professor at Texas A&M, discusses his work with black soldier fly maggots that might just help save the world by providing a zero-waste option for organic recycling.
A former U.S. Navy rescue swimmer sails around Cape Horn for PTSD awareness and makes a film about the treacherous journey. And see how acupuncture and other treatments for people can help our four-legged friends too.
Texas A&M-Galveston's Dr. August "Gussie" Rother, who heads up the Department of Maritime Transportation, tells about life at sea, and Texas A&M celebrates 100 years of one of its most famous traditions by presenting some old footage of the original 12th Man himself, E. King Gill.
The Texas A&M University System celebrates the holidays through music. Hear the Singing Cadets from Texas A&M in College Station, organ music from Texas A&M International University in Laredo and jazz from Texas A&M-Kingsville.
Robert Earl Keen, one of Texas A&M’s most famous former students, played his final concert in Aggieland on Sept. 2 at Aggie Park. Also, learn more about the massive park project that turned an unused area of campus into a beautiful space.
A Texas A&M student battles pancreatitis and creates a movement to help other children battle the same disease. Also, find out how the front lines of a wildfire are managed.
A Texas A&M student runs from College Station to Las Vegas to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club. Also, when NOAA abandoned its sea turtle rescue program on the Gulf Coast, an A&M Galveston professor took up the responsibility and now is working to build a multimillion dollar Sea Turtle Rescue Center.
One of the summer camps that Texas A&M hosts is designed specifically for adults with disabilities. Also, Metra Mehran, a native of Afghanistan and a graduate of A&M’s Bush School, escaped the Taliban with the help of a group of Aggies and friends in the intelligence community.
Each semester, students in the vet tech program at Texas A&M -Kingsville work with – and often adopt – local strays from the pound that are brought into the program. Also, Dr. Katherine Brown of Tarleton State University is one of the nation's top researchers when it comes to criminal justice and working with police departments.
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Dance Director Jilissa Cotten broke her neck while boogie-boarding and had to re-learn how to walk and how to teach dance. Also, the Texas Sea Grant College Program at Texas A&M has served the coastal community for over 50 years through outreach and research.
The REACH Project was created to help “invisible Aggies,” the essential workers of the Texas A&M campus who care for the students, faculty and facilities. Also, a forester with the Texas A&M Forest Service explains how to use wood instead of steel to build multi-story buildings.
A unique center at Texas A&M teaches students the management, handling, behavior and veterinary care of exotic wildlife species. Also, meet an instructor of the Humanities in Medicine at Texas A&M, as he transforms an elective course into a documentary series about history, medicine and the lessons from our past.
Dr. Rob Ambrose, a former NASA robotics expert, is now teaching at Texas A&M. Also, since 1972, Texas A&M Football has had just two head equipment managers; we will meet one of them.
The red-cockaded woodpecker is an endangered species that has found refuge in the urban ecosystem of the W.G. Jones State Forest. Their champion is Donna Work, a Texas A&M Forest Service Biologist who climbs 40-foot pine trees to check on the birds. Also, the team at the Texas A&M Tele-behavioral Care Program is using virtual counseling to help communities and schools across the Brazos Valley.
Dr. Wachsmann, a professor of biblical archeology at Texas A&M, took part in an amazing find at the Sea of Galilee in 1985. Also, when the pandemic hit, studying abroad was put on hold, but that didn’t stop two Texas A&M professors from giving their students a virtual study abroad experience.
In the final episode of the season, we tour the Texas A&M System’s RELLIS campus in Bryan to see what’s happening at the new Bush Complex Development Complex, and listen to Christmas music from around the System.
In the summer of 2023, Texas A&M brought several of the state’s top barbecue joints and country music artists to Aggieland for Troubadour Festival. Also, artist Georgia O’Keeffe taught art classes at what’s now West Texas A&M University, where she painted some of her best work.
We meet the director of the Astros Foundation, who spent her career advancing to an executive in the Texas oil industry, and was ultimately recruited by the Astros to run their foundation. We’ll also explore the national shortage of line workers keeping our electrical systems online, and how a program at RELLIS is addressing that problem by training the next generation of linemen.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management is working with local communities to fund personal and community storm shelters. Also, a World War II veteran decided to participate in the “Aggie Rings for Veterans” program and made a dear friend along the way.
West Texas A&M has a champion meat judging team thanks to team members’ hard work, discipline, and practice. Also, students at Prairie View A&M University — with the help of Getty Images —are working to give a clear image of the history of this great Texas HBCU.
The Stiles Farm Foundation, under the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, was formed to take risks that other farms can’t, all while remaining profitable. Also, Kateryna Shynkaruk witnessed destruction and Russia’s violence in Kiev before fleeing her home. Now, she works at the Washington, D.C. campus of the Bush School of Government & Public Service.
Bill Mahomes came from a segregated high school to Texas A&M in the earliest days of integration, and now he is chairman of the Board of Regents. Also, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension launched the “Battleground to Breaking Ground” program to give veterans a foothold in the agriculture industry.
Texas A&M Engineering Extension built “Disaster City” to train urban search and rescue teams how to act quickly and safely in real-life scenarios. Also, Aggie Build is a student led organization that designs, constructs and deploys medical clinics worldwide.
We join the Texas A&M School of Law in Fort Worth, where legendary running back and Aggie alumn, Trayveon Williams, is helping teach a course on one of the most fascinating new policies by the NCAA: N.I.L. We’ll also learn how the Texas A&M Forest Service is leading the nation in predicting, anticipating, and responding to wildfires – before they even spark.
In this episode of “Around Texas,” we visit the birthplace of the mascot of Texas A&M University where her mom and siblings still reside. We’ll also go to the border of Texas and Mexico, where the Texas A&M Schools of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences provide world class medical care to thousands of animals across the Rio Grande Valley.
This episode takes you behind the scenes of a Fightin' Texas Aggie football game to witness the planning and precision that goes into the pre-game fly-overs, and shows how the horses of the Texas A&M Parsons Mounted Cavalry are providing therapy and healing for our veterans and for children with physical, emotional, and cognitive issues through the Courtney Cares program.
In this episode, we visit Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, where nursing professors are using virtual reality and a simulation lab to train students for the real world. Then we go to a park like no other – where people of all ages and conditions can operate heavy machinery, from bulldozers and excavators to everything in between.
For our Season 4 finale, we join Gen. Joe Ramirez – now Texas A&M’s Vice President for Student Affairs – to learn about the university’s long tradition of service. We’ll also take a look at how the 12th Man Foundation is building A&M Athletics into a national contender by exploring the more than $120 million worth of construction this summer around the Graham Athletic Complex.