Student Spotlight – Samantha Mulvihill

A Bronco at West Point

This past November, I was honored to be nominated to represent Boise State University at the United States Military Academy’s 73rd annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs. The conference, also known as SCUSA, consists of four days of discussion between cadets, student delegates, scholars, and practitioners in an attempt to discover strategies and solutions for complex foreign policy issues. This year’s overall conference theme was “American Foreign Policy in an Era of Polarized Politics and Revisionist Powers.”

Upon my arrival in West Point, New York, I listened to a panel of experts talk about this theme and how it relates to each of the 16 roundtable topics that cadets and student delegates are assigned to. The roundtable topic I was assigned was “China and The Implications of Its Rise.” Through my coursework at Boise State, I understood the importance of China’s increasing global power in pretty much every industry. Luckily, I had amazing cadets, student delegates, and scholars to discuss this elaborate topic with. For the majority of the conference, our roundtable members would meet and discuss threats to both global democracy and our national security posed by China. At the end of the conference, our group produced a policy memorandum that spoke to what actions we thought the United States should take to combat those threats.

Not only did I learn a great deal about the conference theme and my roundtable topic, but I was also rewarded with new friendships and connections from this conference. The history, culture, and expertise I witnessed at West Point also helped finalize my decision to work towards my intended career as an officer in the United States Army upon graduation this May. I would recommend students at Boise State who are interested in Foreign Policy to consider attending in future years.