The Texas A&M Memorial Student Center, referred to by students and staff as the “MSC” is more than just a building. For more than fifty years, the MSC served Aggies as sort of the “living room” of the Texas A&M University campus. Equipped with lounges, dining, and recreational facilities, the MSC played a vital role in the transformation of Texas A&M from an all-male, all-military, rural college to a university internationally recognized for excellence in a variety of fields.
For most current students at A&M, the MSC is more of an idea and a road block than a place of life, activity and honor. Because of the renovations, since 2009 the MSC currently serves the students and staff of A&M as a massive construction site to navigate around to and from classes. Fortunately, the reopening and re-dedication of the MSC is quickly approaching. On April 21, 2012 the new and improved facility will finally serve the Texas A&M campus again. This is a special time because the MSC was originally dedicated on Muster in 1951.
“. . . I am really looking forward to honoring that piece of our history while allowing the Muster events of 2012 to shine and utilize this amazing new space," said Elizabeth Andrasi ’11, President/CEO for the 62nd Memorial Student Center Council. Andrasi, who has been involved in many aspects of the MSC since she was a freshman, shares her insight on what it is like to make important decisions regarding the MSC on behalf of the student body. Read more here!
Once it’s completed the renovated Memorial Student Center will once again become the campus gathering place featuring: state-of-the-art meeting rooms, grand ballroom on the second floor, new lounge and visual arts spaces, new/revamped dining and retail Spaces, redesigned Hall of Honor, 12th Man Hall, an exterior reminiscent of the original MSC, inviting new entrances and beautiful interior decor promoting Texas A&M’s history.
Author Amy Bacon, Building Leaders, Living Traditions: The Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University (TAMU 2009) surveys the development of two functions that quickly became vital to the mission of the Memorial Student Center: its role as a leadership laboratory for students—especially those not in the Corps of Cadets—and its centerpiece location as a place of extracurricular cultural and intellectual enrichment. Bacon demonstrates how the MSC and the traditions that have developed around it blend with the national student union movement in a unique way that enhances the institutional heritage and aspirations of Texas A&M University.
Her attractively illustrated book draws heavily on recorded oral histories, archives, and extensive interviews with key administrative leaders and students, both former and current.
Building Leaders, Living Traditions narrates the story of an institution that has transformed and enriched the lives of thousands of Aggie students and is poised to continue its vital mission for decades to come.
Read more about Bacon, Building Leaders, Living Traditions: The Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M University and order your own copy here, just in time for the reopening!
