Jeannie Johnson ‘93 pioneered a new path in security studies called strategic culture, which examines how national and organizational cultures affect security policy and decision-making. She witnessed the need for a new framework while serving as an analyst in the CIA and seeing how often decisions were made with incomplete information. The assistant professor of political science at Utah State University flipped the model she co-designed “to look at our adversaries” and examined American culture for her doctoral studies. USU students nominated Johnson to deliver the annual Honors La ..read more

The Lieutenant Governor of Ontario is considered an extension of the British crown focused on ensuring the Canadian constitution is followed in the province and on building civic pride. “A lot of my work is to know the hearts and minds and souls of our citizens,” Elizabeth Dowdeswell M.S. ’72, told Utah State University students during a book club meeting in March. (Her selection: Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril by Thomas Homer-Dixon). Shortly after her 2014 appointment, Dowdeswell began visiting communities around the province and realized something was missing: p ..read more

THE ROAD TO SUFFRAGE HAS BEEN LONG, BUMPY, AND HAS AT TIMES, REVERSED COURSE. The women of Utah Territory were the first in the nation to head to the polls in 1870. But the right to vote was short-lived. In 1887, their right to vote was repealed by Congress only to be reinstated in 1896. It would be yet another two and half decades before the ratification of the 19th Amendment expanded suffrage to women across the country. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 helped finish the job, removing barriers for disenfranchised African Americans to vote. In 2020, Utah State University launched its Year of the ..read more

As the possibility that Spencer Cox ’98 was going to be elected Utah’s 18th governor began to look more and more probable during the fall of 2020, he and his wife, Abby ‘98, turned some of their attention towards what she might want her primary focus to be as the state’s next First Lady. “When you decide to run for governor, you do let your mind wander once in a while and start thinking, Well, what if we actually won? What would that look like?” Governor Cox recalls. “And I remember asking Abby what she thought about her role, and what an initiative might be.” Since it’s become customary that ..read more

Mike Simpson ‘77 was having lunch with his mother and two of his uncles in November 2021 when he felt it necessary to divulge his ambitious plan. A U.S. congressman from the state of Idaho since 1999, Simpson was about to unveil the Columbia Basin Initiative (CBI), a proposal that calls for breaching four dams to help preserve the Gem State’s wild salmon and steelhead runs. “I told them, ‘Well, all hell’s going to hit the fan about February,’ and they said, ‘Why?’” Simpson recalls. “I said, ‘I’m going to put out a proposal to save Idaho’s salmon runs that are going to extinct in the next 10 to ..read more

Letters hold power. Sheets of paper often no thicker than a fallen maple leaf filled with words typed in neat rows, scrawled in crayon, or linked by delicate cursive. Letters can speak of despair. Of anger. Of hope. In the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, America’s stories come flooding in by the thousands every week. And someone reads them all—lots of someones. Kolbie Blume’s first job after graduating from Utah State University was reading and responding to constituent letters on behalf of President Barack Obama. Often people described how their lives would be affected by a ..read more

Brent Hill ’73 of the National Institute for Civil Discourse weighs in. While serving as senate president pro tempore of the Idaho Senate, Brent Hill BS ’73 was called upon to make a trip to Washington, D.C. for a meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Located directly west of the White House, the building houses the offices of the Vice President of the United States, and Hill was a little taken aback when former VP Mike Pence suddenly stuck his head into the conference room. “It was getting late in the day, but he ended up visiting with us for about 20 minutes and let us ask que ..read more

When Yana Bogoev went to Washington D.C. last August as an intern for U.S. Representative Ben McAdams, of Utah, she knew it would be memorable. It turned historical. After Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Sept. 24 that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump, phone calls from McAdams’ constituents spiked and Bogoev, a junior in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, began to get earfuls of democracy. Loud, heated, passionate earfuls, with phrases and wording strangely similar to what she was hearing on Fox News and CNN. “But being there at such a monume ..read more

Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, seated, with Gov. Gary Herbert, loves to show his lighter side, the one who gets to drive around the state and see people on their best days. It’s the times when he is with people on their worst days, however, that has come to best define him. In the five years since Spencer J. Cox, ’98 took the oath of office to become the state’s second in command, he has proven to be more than a ribbon-cutting stand-in for the governor. He has already made international headlines simply for showing empathy. A rural kid from Fairview, Utah, Cox spent his summers getting up at 5 a.m. t ..read more