MSC Student Conference on National Affairs

The MSC Student Conference on National Affairs (MSC SCONA) provides programs for students across Texas, the nation, and the world to exchange ideas and discuss the role of the United States in the global community.

MSC SCONA was founded in 1955 by John Jenkins '56 and Bud Whitney '56, senior students in the Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets, after they had attended the 6th Student Conference on United States Affairs (SCUSA) at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Jenkins and Whitney presented the idea to bring in students from the South and Southwest to a conference held at Texas A&M, as it would allow those students to engage in the same type of experience as West Point.

The highest ranking military officer to speak at an MSC SCONA conference was GEN Martin Dempsey, USA, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2015.

Purpose and structure
Each year, MSC SCONA adopts a relevant topic to guide discussions, anchor policy proposals, and provide inspiration for the conference speakers and facilitators. The approximately 150 delegates represent universities across the United States and commonly include the Federal Service Academies, the seven United States Senior Military Colleges, and top schools from across the Southeastern Conference. Although MSC SCONA once included delegates from local high schools as well as from Mexico and Canada, both practices have since been discontinued. Since at least as far back as the time of SCONA Finance Chairman Henry Cisneros, later the Secretary of United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, members of the committee have traveled to cities across Texas to raise private funds to operate the conference.

MSC SCONA has an enduring partnership with the Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at the United States Military Academy at West Point as well as the 55th Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. At SCONA 8, one of the roundtable facilitators was U.S. Army Colonel Rocco M. Paone, the founding director of NAFAC just a year before. Although Professors from Texas A&M and other schools often serve as facilitators, only SCONA 36 on the future of European integration has received scholarly notice.

The conference is organized and run by a committee of Texas A&M University students. These students, many of them from the Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets and the Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service, serve as delegates, roundtable hosts, and conference staff members. MSC SCONA became racially integrated fully in 1961, several years before the University as a whole. The Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service and MSC SCONA have a long standing relationship beyond student leadership to include speakers such as former Dean Amb. Ryan Crocker, speaking at SCONA 56 in 2011 and 61 in 2016. Amb. Napper, a Bush School professor, has also had a leading role in the ISCNE.

Since 2011, MSC SCONA has partnered with the United States Army War College to hold a pre-conference exercise called the International Strategic Crisis Negotiation Exercise (ISCNE). In previous years, this experience has focused on international conflicts like that of the Nagorno-Karabakh area and the island of Cyprus. In 2017, United States Army officers and civilian staff modified the exercise, now entitled the Domestic Crisis Strategic Response Exercise (DCSRE), in order to better complement SCONA 62's topic of homeland security. Speakers at the latest conference include Commandant of the Marines Gen. Robert Neller, USMC, Director of the National Security Agency Adm. Michael S. Rogers, USN, Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory Charles F. McMillan, and Islamic reformer Tawfik Hamid.