1989: The Dallas/Fort Worth School of Law begins in August as a night law school in Irving, Texas. The school’s first class has 93 students.
1991: The law school opens its day division.
1992: Texas Wesleyan University acquires the law school.
1997: The law school moves to its current location in downtown Fort Worth at 1515 Commerce St.
1999: The ABA grants full accreditation to the law school.
2012: The law school becomes a member of the Association of American Law Schools.
2013: Texas A&M University acquires Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, which then becomes Texas A&M University School of Law.
Texas A&M is the state’s first public institution of higher education. With a current student body of more than 50,000 and a physical campus in Bryan-College Station, Texas, of more than 5,200 acres, Texas A&M is also among the nation’s largest universities. Its origins, however, were much humbler.
Texas A&M owes its origin to the Morrill Act, approved by the U.S. Congress on July 2, 1862. This Act provided for donation of public land to the states for the purpose of funding higher education, whose “leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts.”
Texas A&M underwent many changes in the 1960s under the presidency of Gen. James Earl Rudder. Under his tenure the college diversified and began admitting women and minorities. Participation in the Corps of Cadets was also made voluntary. In 1963, the Texas state legislature officially renamed the school to Texas A&M University, with the “A” and “M” being a symbolic link to the school’s past but no longer officially standing for “Agricultural and Mechanical.”
Since that time, Texas A&M has flourished and has become one of the nation’s premier research universities. It is one of only three Tier 1 universities in the state. In 1971 and 1989 respectively, Texas A&M was designated as a Sea Grant and a Space Grant institution, making it among the first four universities to hold the triple distinction of Land Grant, Sea Grant and Space Grant designations.