UNH’s Student Model United Nations Team Honored Second Year in a Row

The spring conference, which takes place in New York City and has two separate weeks of activity for 5,000 students from over 200 universities around the world, requires students to work in teams representing a country.

UNH was assigned Trinidad and Tobago and had to act as the nation’s delegates, drafting resolutions, giving speeches and lobbying others about human rights, weapons and environmental policies. The conference also included briefings by distinguished speakers from the diplomatic community.

"My goal is to empower students to drive their own learning and development," said Chris Haynes, assistant professor of political science and the team’s adviser.  "I encourage them to be willing to take risks and believe in themselves and this new way of learning." He attributes the team’s success to the political science program’s focus on student-centered learning.

During the conference, students have to follow United Nations’ protocol and rules and the laws of their assigned country. They present position papers they have researched and lobby other delegates to their position.

But they have to work on the programs even before they get to the conference.  Working in pairs, they have to write a two-page position paper about how they could solve current global problems, complete with specific policy recommendations. The paper is graded and scored so students begin the conference with a certain number of points that will contribute to their overall success.

"At the conference, the students are going from 7:30 in the morning until 11:30 at night," Haynes said.  "It tests their limits because, like in real life, there is a lot of business done outside formal sessions. Between sessions, they have to write position papers and meet with other student delegates."

And the learning is not only in the formal program. One student who attended, Melissa Peil ’18 of North Syracuse, N.Y., met an individual from Iraqi Kurdistan who told her about joining his country’s army and being on the front lines fighting ISIS.

"It was such a humbling experience," she said. "Now we are friends on Facebook, and we talk often. When I begin taking Arabic next semester, he intends to help me since that is his second language."

Although many schools actually have courses that allow students to spend a semester focused on the issues, UNH has not done that so far. Next fall, however, it will begin offering a Model UN course.

"Model UN has opened my mind to so many possibilities the world has to offer," said Peil. "And you can’t just get that anywhere."

Aemin Becker ’18 hopes to work for the U.N. one day. "I learned how to work with other people from different backgrounds in order to reach a consensus on central issues, which is a valuable life skill in a conflict-ridden world," she said.

Randi Trinidad ’17, a criminal justice major from Bronx, N.Y., said the conference helped her develop a newfound knowledge about countries from around the globe. "This opportunity gave me insight into the issues that other nations are going through."

The students hope to attend a similar conference in Kobe, Japan, in November 2016 and have already begun working on projects for the fall 2015 Model UN in Washington, D.C.

"We can celebrate our recognition for a day or two, and then we have to start getting ready for the fall conference in Washington," Haynes said.

About the University of New Haven

The University of New Haven is a private, top-tier comprehensive institution recognized as a national leader in experiential education. Founded in 1920 the university enrolls approximately 1,800 graduate students and more than 4,600 undergraduates.