Texas A&M University System chancellor announces plans to retire next summer

Kate Marijolovic
·2 min read

Chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, John Sharp, announced on Monday he will be retiring next year.

Sharp will officially retire on June 30, 2025, after the conclusion of the upcoming legislative session. Appointed in 2011, he is the longest-serving chancellor in the TAMU System’s history.

“Leading this grand enterprise has been one of the great privileges of my life, a challenge, and an honor,” Sharp wrote in a letter announcing his retirement.

Texas A&M will expand its presence in downtown Fort Worth with a three-building complex built on four blocks where the current law school is today. This January 2023 photo looking north shows the blocks between the parallel Jones Street, in the right foreground, and Calhoun Street.
Texas A&M will expand its presence in downtown Fort Worth with a three-building complex built on four blocks where the current law school is today. This January 2023 photo looking north shows the blocks between the parallel Jones Street, in the right foreground, and Calhoun Street.

Sharp said in an interview he originally planned on being chancellor for only three to five years. Almost 13 years later, he has added a law school to the TAMU system, made the university system a co-manager of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and more.

During Sharp’s tenure, the Fort Worth-based Texas A&M School of Law rose to become one of the top law schools in the country. This spring, U.S. News and World Report ranked the Texas A&M School of Law the 26th best law school in the country.

System-wide enrollment has risen over the past three years; 157,063 students were enrolled in the TAMU system during the fall 2023 semester.

“We have grown this enterprise to such a powerful state that Texas A&M, quite frankly, is the school of choice for Texas kids,” Sharp said.

An artist’s rendering of Texas A&M-Fort Worth’s future Law and Education Building in downtown. The eight-story building will be one of three on the new campus.
An artist’s rendering of Texas A&M-Fort Worth’s future Law and Education Building in downtown. The eight-story building will be one of three on the new campus.

Sharp has long supported Texas A&M’s new Fort Worth campus, which is under construction. He is a proponent of the corporate partnerships the university is building to design curriculum tailored to educate a strong workforce for regional employers.

“It’s not just transformative for Fort Worth, but it’s transformative for Texas A&M and the Texas A&M System in the Metroplex,” Sharp said.

The Texas A&M system broke ground on the campus in June 2023. The $320 million Fort Worth campus will be the city’s first Tier One research university. The eight-story Law & Education Building, one of three buildings to be constructed for the project, is expected to open in 2025.

“I’m confident that our ideals for what’s happening in Fort Worth will get even bigger and better over the next decade,” Sharp said.