By Hank McIntire
Sam Fletcher, Wood research assistant and Quill team lead at the UVU Center for Constututional
Studies.
Growing up in Cache Valley, Utah, Sam Fletcher fit the mold like his peers: attending local elementary and secondary schools, showing an interest in agriculture, enrolling at Utah State, pursuing a business degree with a focus on marketing, and planning to live, work, and raise a family in or near his native Wellsville.
The fourth of six children, Sam was involved in 4-H and later Future Farmers of America (FFA) at Mountain Crest High School.
“I showed hogs when I was in 4-H, and later I added steers,” Sam said. “I still operate a business where I breed cattle and sell calves to young 4-H members needing an animal for their projects.”
He has experience in that department, raising a steer that became a reserve grand champion (second place overall) at the Cache County fair in 2018.
In 2020 his life then made some unexpected turns after he was called to serve a two-year church mission in Argentina but ended up in Tennessee for 15 months due to COVID.
It was an unforeseen twist, Sam admits. “I had to learn to take life as it comes. That lesson came as I worked with other people and trusted them. It also gave me perspective on setting goals.”
Sam eventually made it to South America for the last eight months of his mission, picked up some solid Spanish, and then picked up where he left off with his plans: to start as a freshman in Logan as a business major with an emphasis in marketing.
The following year school year saw him at Utah Valley University in Orem instead of Utah State University. “UVU had a business degree that USU didn’t have,” said Sam. “It combined digital marketing and business with an MBA mixed in, so I moved down south.”
But in the summer before his sophomore year at UVU, Sam took a tour across Europe organized by the national World War II museum, which would alter his plans even more.
“The experience awakened a passion for history and a love for my country that was influential in redirecting my academic path,” said Sam. “When I got back from my trip and before classes started, I switched to studying history."
Needing a job to boost his income, Sam looked for a position on campus and landed at the Center for Constitutional Studies (CCS) in May 2024 as a Wood research assistant on the Oxford-based Quill Project. Unlike most of his colleagues, however, Sam was not recruited by a faculty member or classmate to work with Quill.
“I saw a job posting on the UVU website,” Sam recalled. “I liked the research opportunities and the chance to collaborate with the team at Oxford. I had an interest in law and to learn about state constitutions,” the focus of the work of the Quill Project, which is to create digital models of the negotiations of state-constitutional conventions from which constitutions emerged.
A few months into his first stint at CCS, another opportunity arose for Sam to be a congressional intern for Rep. Blake Moore (R–Utah) in Washington, D.C. In that role Sam had a front-row seat into the workings of Congress.
“I came to realize that our current system is not as polarized behind the scenes as people are led to believe,” he explained. “It made me more optimistic and gave me more trust in the Constitution and how our government is set up.”
Sam’s time on the Hill sparked one last adjustment to his academic track. “It was the catalyst that got me into National Security Studies,” which is his major.
Back at CCS, Sam is currently a team lead for the Indiana constitutional convention of 1850–1851. He and his colleagues are analyzing how delegates went about their work.
“They never used the Committee of the Whole in their negotiations,” he explained. “The Committee is the procedural framework a convention uses to build out resolutions and amendments. Normally the Committee passes their finished products on to the convention. Instead, Indiana just did everything in the convention. It was very unusual.”
Sam enjoys the work and the challenge to apply what he learned in his English and history classes in high school, subjects which foreshadowed his interest in law.
“My research ability has definitely expanded,” said Sam. “Reading sources, interpreting contexts, and the standards for Quill have made me a better writer.”
“I like opportunities to engage with historic materials and learn about the process of making constitutions,” he added. “Realizing I wanted to go into law was the big pull. And it’s rewarding to meet and engage with professionals in the field of constitutional and civic thought.”
He plans to graduate from UVU in Spring 2027. “I will apply to law school to one day be a federal prosecutor or general counsel at a private company,” said Sam. “I was really into military history in high school, and I’ve even looked into being a JAG in the military.”
Sam knows he reached this point with the help of many others. That includes state legislators and donors who helped fund the work of the Center for Constitutional Studies and the Quill Project.
“I feel gratitude to those organizations and individuals investing in such a worthwhile effort,” he said. “This team is growing, and in the future, Quill will be a major resource within the legal and academic communities for studying constitutional thought. We on the project benefit from their contributions.”
In sum, Sam has been “steered” in a direction different from where he was headed at first, but he is good with that.
“My plans when I started were to stay in Cache Valley. My family is there,” said Sam. “You never know; plans change. Sometimes things don’t turn out how we expect them to. And sometimes it’s for the better.”
