Texas A&M’s Long History of Creating New Opportunities

Michael Albert “Mike” Hernandez III, now partially retired after decades of service and leadership to D & M Leasing in Dallas, Texas, channels his personal wealth into nonprofit efforts to improve the lives of youth and families in his hometown of Brownsville and beyond. Through his Brownsville Scholars program, he gives college-age young people from the severely under-resourced community free tuition to Texas A&M University for four years of study. Mike Hernandez III is himself a graduate of Texas A&M, where he studied industrial distribution.

Texas A&M offers a rich variety of academic and extracurricular activities to some 60,000 students. The school’s proud history goes back to its establishment as Texas’ first publicly funded state higher education institution, in the days of land-grant colleges of the mid-1800s.

In the midst of the Civil War, the United States Congress passed the Morrill Act, which contributed public lands to individual states to found colleges teaching agriculture and allied trades, as well as traditional academic subjects. In 1871, Texas followed up on this promise of an opportunity to democratize education by approving the creation of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.

Famous supporters have included the 41st President George H. W. Bush, who elected to house a presidential library on the Texas A&M campus.