Andrey Sazonov, President European Horizons Chapter at the University of Iowa
Every year the United States Military Academy at West Point hosts a Student Conference on US Affairs (SCUSA) - an event that brings together highest performing students from all over the United States and gives them a chance to create policy papers that address the most pressing contemporary issues that face the United States and the world.
Attendees of the conference are assigned to one of the fifteen round tables in which they are being paired with co-chairs - who usually represent the United States government, think tanks, or academia - and work together on a creation of strategies that they think the United States should implement in order to solve a particular pressing issue.
This year Andrey Sazonov, president of the European Horizons chapter at the University of Iowa, represented the European Horizons think tank at SCUSA. This experience allowed Andrey to interact with numerous student leaders, as he was able to provide them with information about the think tank itself and about the upcoming European Student Conference that will take place in February of 2016.
In addition, Andrey was able to establish contact with a number of representatives from the United States government and academia. Among them was Lawrence Butler - who was in charge of the US-EU relations in the State Department from 1993 until 1994 and in the White House from 1997 until 1999. Furthermore, Mr. Butler served as the United States Ambassador to Macedonia from 2002 until 2005 and is currently working as a senior coordinator for knowledge management in the Office of the Deputy Secretary of State. Ambassador Butler was very glad to hear about the student think tank and expressed interest in getting involved with and providing assistance to European Horizons.
The major highlight of this conference, however, was establishing contact with Secretary Madeline Albright. Ms. Albright served as a keynote speaker at the conference and as a consequence, Andrey was able to provide Secretary Albright with the materials and information regarding the European Horizons and European Student Conference. Ms. Albright was very exited to hear about the European Horizons initiative and expressed interest in providing support to the think tank.
Currently European Horizons is communicating with the personal assistant of Secretary Albright in order to find out if there is a possibility that Ms. Albright can record a video message for the upcoming European Student Conference.
More information about SCUSA together with the policy papers produced in every round table can be found below:
http://www.usma.edu/scusa/SitePages/Home.aspx
For more information on European Horizons and the European Student Conference 2016, please visit www.europeanhorizons.org