Around Texas

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.