2 Angelo State Students Selected to Attend Prestigious National Conferences

SAN ANGELO, TX — Evelyn Burch, a senior in the Angelo State University Honors Program, has been named a 2017-18 Presidential Fellow by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC), and she is currently attending the center’s annual Fall Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., through Oct. 28.  

A political science major from Clinton, Md., Burch is one of only about 70 Presidential Fellows selected from universities throughout the U.S. and select foreign nations. She has joined the other fellows at the conference to engage with policy experts, government and military officials, and leaders in the legislative process. They will also participate in workshops where they present and are critiqued on their independent research projects that they will continue to develop over the next six months and then present at the 2018 Spring Leadership Conference. 

Burch is the fourth ASU Honors Program student to be named a CSPC Presidential Fellow, joining Christian Garcia of San Angelo (2016-17), Duncan Knox of Ozona (2014-15) and Donald “Trey” Moore of Colleyville (2013-14), who are all now ASU graduates. Burch also attended the 2016 Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference and won a Dennis Boe Award for her research at the 2017 Great Plains Honors Council Conference. This summer, she completed a 10-week U.S. Department of Defense internship in St. Louis. 

Meanwhile, Honors Program student Katherine Dunlap, a junior biochemistry major from San Angelo, has been selected to attend the Student Conference on U.S. Affairs hosted by the United States Military Academy at West Point Oct. 31 – Nov. 5 at the USMA campus in New York. 

Dunlap is one of only about 200 undergraduate students from 125 colleges and universities worldwide selected for the annual conference. The students will hear from high-profile speakers, discuss and debate the impact of past and current events on U.S. national strategy, and collaborate on policy recommendations for the U.S. government. 

The theme of this year’s conference is “The Politics of the Forgotten and the Aggrieved: Remaking the World Order?” The student delegates will interact with cadets and experts from academia and public service in roundtable discussions on key topics ranging from the impact of populism on U.S. and European domestic policy and the future of American alliances to climate change, ethnoreligious conflict and mass displacement.

This is the second straight year an ASU Honors Program student has been selected to attend the conference. Burch represented ASU at the conference in 2016.