Andrew Morriss oversaw the transformation and dramatic rise in the rankings of the former Texas Wesleyan School of Law into the Texas A&M School of Law.
He was the first dean hired by Texas A&M after it bought in 2013, and since then the school has steadily risen from U.S. News & World Report's unranked tier to claim the No. 92 spot an almost unheard of ascent.
Now, the university has a new challenge for Morriss: heading up a brand new School of Innovation at its main campus in College Station, a gig he will assume Aug. 1.
Legal academics generally aren't known as innovators. After all, modern law school largely follows the case method format pioneered by Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard Law School more than 120 years ago. But Morriss introduced a steady stream of changes at the Fort Worth law school intended to make it more competitive and relevant in today's legal market.
We spoke with Morriss about what a school of innovation is, the changes at Texas A&M's law school, and the need for legal educators to embrace new ways of teaching and structuring their law schools. His answers have been edited for length.
What, exactly is this new School of Innovation, or "I-School" as the university has dubbed it?
This is going to be a very different kind of academic unit. We're not going to have any permanent faculty. We're not going to have any majors, though ultimately we hope to offer a minor. A big part of my charge is to facilitate students and faculty to create student-led, high-impact learning experiences that will help them learn the skills employers want: working on teams; being creative; being entrepreneurial; being innovative.
What's an example of a "student-led, high-impact learning experience?"
Let's say you had students with an idea about putting sensors on campus buses and creating an app that reported to students where buses were. They would need some engineering people, and maybe some people from transportation services, and a finance major to figure out how it would get funded. They would design it and put together a plan for how to do it, and we'd facilitate that.
Law schools aren't really known for being innovative places. In fact, they're generally seen as risk averse. Is that a fair assessment in 2017?
I think it has been accurate. I think there are some very innovative people in legal education who are starting to change that. Law schools have started to realize there aren't that many people going anymore. I hope that Whittier announcing that it's closing its law school is a wake-up call that more of legal education needs to get more innovative, and it shouldn't all look the same. People need to be doing different things.