Texas A&M University (College & University)

Texas A&M traces its start to 1871, when the Texas Legislature, acting under the federal Morrill Land-Grant Act, voted to create an Agricultural and Mechanical College; local citizens then donated 2,416 acres of Brazos County prairie near Bryan for the campus. The school opened its doors on October 4, 1876, with president Thomas S. Gathright, six faculty members and a first class of cadets, making it the first public college in Texas. For its first decades it admitted only white men, all of whom served in the Corps of Cadets, and its curriculum gradually shifted from classical studies toward scientific agriculture and engineering. Former governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross took over as president in 1891, and many of the customs Aggies still observe, including the Aggie Ring, took shape during his tenure. In World War II roughly 14,000 former students served as officers, more than the U.S. military and naval academies supplied combined, a record that cemented the school's military identity. Under president James Earl Rudder in the 1960s, the college opened its doors to women and Black students, made Corps membership voluntary, and in 1963 took the name Texas A&M University, keeping the letters "A&M" as a nod to its roots. Today the copper-domed Academic Building, the Memorial Student Center, Kyle Field and the Bonfire Memorial anchor a campus of roughly 5,500 acres. The George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum opened on West Campus in 1997, and the university, an Association of American Universities member since 2001, now enrolls the largest student body in the United States.

Sources: tshaonline.orgen.wikipedia.orgtamu.edu