CSU, Chico News

Sixteen first-year Model UN students from California State University, Chico came away with a total of fourteen awards from a conference held November 17-21 in Las Vegas.

Chico won more awards than any other university at the American West Model United Nations Conference. Teams from more than 20 universities, some traveling from as far away as Canada, participated.

Model UN activities include speaking on behalf of the issues of an assigned country, writing position papers, debating positions in committees, and lobbying other delegations. The preparation is extensive and includes research and public speaking practice.

To learn about Model UN and prepare to compete, students take Professor Rick Ostrom’s political science class on Model UN. Ostrom was assisted by Richard Elsom, former Associated Students president, who has had 10 years of Model UN experience and acted as co-head of the delegation.

“Richard and co-head delegate Erin Hofteig put the students through rigorous paces,” said Ostrom. “He took them to the amphitheatre at the creek and had them give extemporaneous speeches projecting across the sounds of the creek.”

“The experience was transformational for the students’ academic self-confidence,” said Ostrom. “The students learned that with preparation and hard work, they are competitive with the best students anywhere. I watched as they became more tolerant of other countries the more they learned.”

Ostrom attended “Symposium 2000″ meetings with other advisers and officers of the United Nations Association. He presented a paper about creating and sustaining a Model UN program. The paper addressed some of the challenges of funding a program that necessarily involves travel expenses.

“The Chico delegation is going to be fund-raising vigorously to pay for a trip to the National Model UN conference in New York in April 2001,” said Ostrom. “We’d like to be able to take seven returnees who brought us the top award at last yearÕs conference.”

The New York conference is the most competitive conference in the world. Several foreign countries also send student delegations to the conference. Chico’s 2000 delegation won both “Outstanding Delegation” and “Outstanding Position Papers” awards in New York.

The results of the hard work were realized in the following awards:

Distinguished Delegate Awards:
Sinan Al-Faqeeh
Ryan Crogan
Dalal Dweid
Meghan Eagleson

Outstanding Delegate Award:
Andreas Efstathiou

Distinguished Delegation Award:
Dalal Dweik and
Amanda Tripp for
representing Palestine

Distinguished Delegation Award:
Ryan Crogan
Megan Mahoney
Bob Ray and
Nathan Stankowski
for representing China

Special Thanks Award:
Amanda Tripp, Palestine

Special Thanks Award:
Sean Coleman, Israel

Special Thanks Award:
Carly Lucas for serving as General Assembly Rapporteur

###

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2000 at 10:34 am and is filed under 2000 Fall.