Students might be surprised by how busy MSU is this week, as more than 15,000 members from the Boy Scouts of America’s National Honor Society are expected to arrive on campus Monday for a week-long national conference, a scout official said.
The conference is known as the National Order of the Arrow Conference, or NOAC, and it will take place across campus from Aug. 3 through 8.
The Order of the Arrow was founded in 1915 by Dr. E. Urner Goodman and Carroll A. Edson, making this year the centennial anniversary.
The NOAC is held every couple of years and the last conference in 2012 was also held at MSU, Chief Okemos District director Corey Curtiss said. The NOAC has different training sessions for the scouts, primarily teaching them leadership skills along with a variety of events.
“During the week we have a number of training (events) — your leadership training, camping training, how to work with people and there’s Native American dancing,” Curtiss said. “Every night there will be some sort of show at the Breslin Center and it’s a major production every night due to our staff and folks who host it.”
Residents and students will have very little access to the events for security reasons, Curtiss said.
