For Ahdieh, chief operating officer of Texas A&M-Fort Worth, the building is both a milestone and a test. It reflects A&M Law\u2019s rise from regional program to national competitor \u2014 and an attempt to extend his success formula beyond the law school.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a modest vision, but it\u2019s not a pie-in-the-sky vision either,\u201d Ahdieh said. \u201cWe have all the ingredients. It\u2019s just a question of whether we can either choose to capitalize on them or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Goss-CandidConvo-06-scaled-1-1024x683.jpg\")
Robert Ahdieh, Texas A&M-Fort Worth chief operating officer, listens during a Candid Conversation panel on Aug. 19, 2025, at Tarleton State University\u2019s Fort Worth campus. (Mary Abby Goss | Fort Worth Report)
\nLaw growth<\/p>\n
When the Texas A&M University System acquired Texas Wesleyan University\u2019s law school in 2013, the school sat outside the national rankings. By the time Ahdieh arrived, it cracked the top 100, hovering in the 80s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How U.S. News ranks law schools<\/p>\n
U.S. News & World Report\u2019s Best Law Schools rankings<\/a> offer one measure of law school\u2019s standings, with nearly 60% of the methodology tied to employment outcomes. The remaining weight is given to factors such as faculty resources, student credentials and professional assessments. Schools are also ranked by specialty areas and provide data on admissions, costs, curriculum, employment and salaries.<\/p>\n His agreement with Texas A&M was simple: If the university invested in the law school, he would try to move it into the 50s within seven years.<\/p>\n The school got there in about three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then it kept climbing \u2014 to No. 29 in 2023, No. 26 the next year and No. 22<\/a> by 2026, behind only the University of Texas at Austin compared to other Texas law schools.<\/p>\n \u201cIf someone had said within seven years we would be in the low 20s, I would have said \u2018That\u2019s ridiculous. It\u2019s not possible to do it,\u2019\u201d Ahdieh said. \u201cBut that combination of hard work and good people really got us there.\u201d<\/p>\n Success formula<\/p>\n Ahdieh attributes A&M Law\u2019s growth to stronger faculty, more scholarships, smaller incoming classes, expanded career services, academic support and admissions capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe investments have been all about people and getting good people in the door,\u201d Ahdieh said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Timothy Mulvaney, law professor and holder of A&M\u2019s Hank & Anne Paup Chair in Law, joined before the acquisition. The school has since hired more than 50 faculty members, an expansion that he said reshaped its research profile, academic reputation and classroom experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo be a top law school requires many things,\u201d he said. \u201cBut an indispensable piece is, of course, a collection of faculty members who are at the top of their fields.\u201d<\/p>\n Mulvaney teaches land-use law. With A&M Law\u2019s smaller class size, he can walk students from campus to zoning commission and historic preservation hearings, then introduce them to policymakers.<\/p>\n The student profile also shifted. Applications have climbed from about 1,600 a year to more than 5,000, Mulvaney said. The median LSAT score rose from 152 to 169. Median undergraduate GPA rose from 3.13 to 4.0. Bar exam passage rose from 74% to 95%.<\/p>\n The faculty growth also changed the student experience because A&M Law kept classes small, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cA Texas A&M Law student knows that he or she will have the opportunity to form close relationships with their professors,\u201d Mulvaney said.<\/p>\n Interdisciplinary fields<\/p>\n When Ahdieh arrived, A&M Law enrolled about 450 students. It now has more than 2,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much of that growth, he said, did not come from future lawyers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The school enrolls doctors, bankers, journalists, hospital administrators and other professionals whose work intersects with the law. Gary Lucas, A&M Law\u2019s senior associate dean, called the Master of Legal Studies<\/a> program one of the school\u2019s success stories. It gives nonlawyers legal training in fields such as human resources, compliance and healthcare administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n That shift made the A&M Law and Education Building a natural extension for Ahdieh. If law touches many industries, he said, why not place it beside engineering, business, health, pharmacy and other fields in downtown Fort Worth?<\/p>\n Roughly half the new building will serve the law school, Ahdieh said. The rest will bring other programs from Texas A&M and Tarleton State University into the same downtown space. Lucas said that proximity could deepen cross-field work, especially in areas such as intellectual property, where patent law often overlaps with engineering.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fort Worth buy-in<\/p>\n The law school also pushed outward.\u00a0<\/p>\n Early on, Ahdieh told staff to let community organizations use the law school\u2019s downtown space without charge because he wanted the school woven into Fort Worth\u2019s civic life.<\/p>\n That presence extended into the legal community, said Brian Newby, managing partner at Cantey & Hanger LLC. As A&M Law improved under the new system, local firms gained access to more highly trained graduates educated in Fort Worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t necessarily always have to go to Austin or Waco or Lubbock or SMU in Dallas to find talent,\u201d Newby said. \u201cThere\u2019s talent right here locally in Fort Worth.\u201d<\/p>\n Newby said Ahdieh also became a civic presence through groups such as Downtown Fort Worth Inc. and Visit Fort Worth, which mattered as the building vision took shape.\u00a0<\/p>\n A&M officials set a $40 million fundraising goal for the first phase of the downtown campus. About $28 million has been raised, Ahdieh said, including roughly $22 million from Fort Worth donors rather than traditional Texas A&M supporters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mayor Mattie Parker, who graduated from Texas Wesleyan\u2019s law school shortly before it became Texas A&M Law, said the A&M system delivered on its promise to invest in the program and raise its stature.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe recognized from the beginning that he had to get the law school right,\u201d Parker said of Ahdieh. \u201cPretend as if he hadn\u2019t been successful in that, we wouldn\u2019t be opening this building in August.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The project also matters because of where it is rising, Newby said. The southeast side of downtown, near the convention center, has long been defined by surface parking lots. The Texas A&M campus is taking shape near the convention center expansion<\/a>, a planned hotel<\/a>, new apartments<\/a>, Trinity Metro\u2019s downtown transit hub and the Fort Worth Water Gardens.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just going to make the southeast quadrant of downtown explode,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next phase<\/p>\n In an April speech at the Downtown Fort Worth Inc. annual meeting, Ahdieh outlined to business leaders, donors and those investing in downtown Fort Worth<\/a> that cities and universities have long shaped each other. He pointed to Boston, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Austin, Dallas and Houston \u2014 cities where higher education helps define identity and drive growth<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fort Worth, he said, should aim higher than becoming bigger. It should become what he calls a \u201cleading city,\u201d one that shapes attitudes, inspires vision and sets direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n The downtown campus is part of that larger ambition. But for A&M Law, the next phase brings a more immediate test: how to grow without losing what made its rise possible.<\/p>\n The new building does not mean the law school will immediately enroll more students, Ahdieh said.\u00a0<\/p>\n For now, it gives A&M Law room to bring together programs, faculty and staff now spread across leased spaces. The challenge is to preserve the close-knit culture that helped the law school rise while sharing a broader campus with engineering, nursing and other programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n The law school has become a \u201cfine-tuned machine,\u201d Ahdieh said, and leaders have to be careful not to lose what made it work. He thinks it\u2019s manageable.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m less interested in buildings than I am in, not just the contents of those buildings but, what they activate and what they make possible,\u201d he said, carefully using the former fireable word.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dang Le is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at dang.le@fortworthreport.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.<\/p>\n The Report\u2019s higher education coverage is supported in part by major higher education institutions in Tarrant County, including Tarleton State University, Tarrant County College, Texas A&M-Fort Worth, Texas Christian University, Texas Wesleyan University, the University of Texas at Arlington and UNT Health Fort Worth.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Rendering](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Texas-AM-Fort-Worth-Research-and-Innovation-Building-1024x793.jpg\")
Texas A&M-Fort Worth will be a 3.5-acre campus in downtown Fort Worth. The Law and Education Building is under construction, and the Research and Innovation Building is being designed. (Courtesy | Texas A&M University System) <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20250710_TAMFW_Construction_07-1024x768.jpg\")
The eight-story, $185 million Law and Education Building is the first of five buildings under construction on the new Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus and is planned to open in August 2026. (Courtesy | Texas A&M University System)<\/p>\n