Conversation Thrives at UST

Alyssa Barnes, now a junior, founded and leads an organization that has achieved national recognition and looks to make its mark on the university. 

Conversation Generation started as a simple reading group back in the fall of 2013 and has grown to be a society of the national organization known as ISI. 

“ISI is the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a non profit, non partisan based organization founded in the 50s to educate students for liberty,” Barnes said. “[Conversation Generation] originated last year with Kelsey Borr and I. She knew of ISI through some professors here who are affiliated with ISI. The idea was that at UST we have little to no initiatives for different degrees to come together. Like you have your biology club and your accounting club, and you have your religious organizations and your political organization but no specific club that was really dedicated towards western civilization being able to discuss any idea with your peers. And so that’s where this comes in.” 

So the reading group began. 

“We got together every two weeks and we would just pull an article or an excerpt from some famous classical work and we would discuss it as a group,” Barnes said. “We discussed business, politics, philosophy, economics, religion, culture, history, all of that. We were trying to make to where it was a forum where students would feel comfortable discussing it and make it more of a conversation than a debate or a lecture.” 

Barnes’ small reading group also took part in a historic reorganization of the decades old Intercollegiate Studies Institute when ISI created societies. Barnes’ society was one of the initial 30 societies to become part of the new ISI. 

“ISI is on 1500 campuses with 30 societies.” Barnes said. “We have had reading groups for the past 60 years but the societies are new. [Recognition as] a society ensures that members of the society have priority registration to ISI events and so being affiliated with ISI gets you into a huge network of people.” 

Barnes also speaks of her personal experience in the program and the benefits that come with working with an organization with the reach and connections such as ISI. 

“Over the summer, I did Arguing Conservatism, which is a debate symposium up in Mecosta, Michigan,” Barnes said. “You had to read the Federalist and Anti-Federalists papers, free market and foreign policy and you debated it with 25 of the top students of the nation and they assign you a mentor. My mentor throughout the week was one of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy administrators. You get to meet people from the White House, past and present. People in foreign policy, people in academics, people in journalism.” 

However, that is not all that ISI offers to its members. Members of Conversation Generation and ISI can participate in a number of events and programs that help enrich their education and network. In a world where so much depends on who you know, this is an especially golden opportunity. 

“Through ISI you also have the honors program, which you have to apply for and its a week long program, they accept 50 students a year, assign you a mentor for the duration of the program who helps you with research and writing thesis,” Barnes said. “It is, again, a huge networking opportunity. They also have the debate symposium, and they have seminars. They have [seminars] on economics, on founding America, pretty much everything.” 

Barnes, among other things, has focused more recent efforts on a plan to expand her organization to include a publication. Such an effort would include the campuses of UST, UH and HBU. It would consist of a collaborative publication focused on politics, civilization and the general circulation of ideas in a manner that encourages conversation on important topics.

Additionally, Conversation Generation is planning to come back in its second year, much bigger than before and with a more pronounced presence on campus. 

While this year they have already had Provost Dominic Aquila speak at one of their meetings, Barnes is just getting started. 

“Through Conversation Generation, we are going to have faculty conversations, where we sit down two professors and they discuss something while students observe,” Barnes said. “We will do weekend seminars on things such as Cicero or on Seneca or on the Republic and things like that. We are also going to do Constitution Quiz bowl, and basically do all we can to facilitate conversation and the broaching of these topics.” 

A long way away from the small reading group that first convened a year ago, Conversation Generation, led by founder Alyssa Barnes, hopes to make a clear and decisive impact on the lives and minds of students in the Houston area for years to come.