Picture of the University of Arkansas Model United Nations Team in Washington DC
Author: Samantha Giudice | Major: International Studies & Asian Studies | Semester: Fall 2022
What do a group of students from all different majors and colleges across the University of Arkansas who have never met each other do? Well, they compete at the National Model United Nations Washington D.C. conference and bring home over 50 percent of all awards. Economics professor Robert Stapp has created a mythical beast at the University of Arkansas, turning groups of strangers into nationally competitive debaters for over 15 years. At the beginning of November, I and 21 other students had the chance to participate in the Washington DC National Model United Nations conference. At this conference, we competed against over 1,000 other students representing other universities from all around the world and managed to win over 50% of the awards for the University of Arkansas. It is this success that has encouraged us to expand Model United Nations into the spring semester and compete at the New York City conference.
The legacy of the University of Arkansas Model United Nations has built a passion into student’s much like myself. They say success cannot be measured, however through the awards won I feel that our team went above and beyond this conference. Representing the People’s Republic of China in front of over 100 other delegations in my committee showed me the practical applications of the very things I have learned at the University of Arkansas. Model United Nations allows us an opportunity to not only practice the very skills we learn at the U of A first-hand, but also allows us to continue to show the success our university has allowed us to achieve.
When I first received the email from Dr. Ka Zeng, head of the international studies department, about Model UN needing to fill in some members after a few dropped out I was unsure if I wanted to investigate the opportunity. I was signed up for a course that I was less than excited about, but also unsure if I wanted to join a class that others had spent all summer preparing for. After speaking with Dr. Stapp, I decided to attend the first class period and see if it was something I would interested in. The room was full of people I had never met before from all different parts of the university. After hearing introductions from all of the other students, and that the Human Rights Council would be up for grabs, I decided to do it. This is where I learned one of the most important things that Model UN has taught me thus far: always jump in feet first. Model UN taught me how to go after things I was interested in and never look back, an experience that will embolden me for years to come.
As someone who has always been a bit of a control freak, Model UN taught me how to harness that side of myself and utilize it in a polite way. You can’t always control the whole situation, which makes it important to identify what you can control and work within that. Because of this, I ended up going for a building block model for my committee and working paper. Beginning with a smaller group I eventually created a group that included 27 different countries, I had started out with only 6. Through minimizing control and then building out I was able to learn how to best use my controlling tendencies in a polite and useful manor. This is something that I have struggled with for a long time, and I know it will be very useful in all further areas of my life.
As for soft skills, there is no better builder than Model United Nations. The ability to speak in front of large groups of people is such a valuable skill that I learned. I went from shaking in my boots presenting to 20 people to a confident speaker in front of more than 100, that kind of development and experience is unparalleled in most of my other courses. Above just speaking, the research that goes into preparing you for Model United Nations is grueling stuff. It requires lots of time and work in order to produce the best position paper possible. While I would consider myself a rather strong writer, I think that the concision required for position paper writing is something I had never had to do before. Working with a partner, and therefore having more opinions that need to be incorporated, left me and my partner with 5 pages when we first began. 5 pages that would have to be turned into 2. We had to cut out the “fluff” and get to the important aspects of what we wanted to talk about. This has made me far more capable to produce good 500 word personal statements for graduate school applications and has made me better in my academic career overall.
Another valuable experience from Model United Nations is just the way it places you into the global sphere. It is easy to sit in a classroom and talk about all the wrongs that happen, but that often leaves me feeling empty at the unfairness within contemporary society. Model UN allowed me to experience how change happens, the actual feeling of working in a room with others to achieve a solution. While the actual experience probably does not flow as easily as it does among college students, it nonetheless helped me to practice what I learn in the classroom and gain real-life experience. Additionally, the Washington DC conference was filled not only with students from different universities from all around the country, but also different people from around the world. In my committee alone there were students from Morocco, Italy, and Taiwan. The cultural aspect from this conference showed me the way that members of vastly difference cultures can work together towards an issue, and also better prepared me to work within an environment where not all members are entering the sphere with the same level of social understanding or cultural background.