Last month, DePaul’s Model United Nations student organization welcomed over 450 high school students to its second annual DeMUN high school conference held on the university’s Lincoln Park Campus. The conference saw students from Chicago, the suburbs and beyond come together for a day of committee simulations, debate practices, leadership and community building.

The event’s success not only highlighted the student group’s efforts to build community within its own ranks but also showed how commitment and leadership can lead to successful events and inspire future Blue Demons.

“For me, DePaul Model UN is community,” says Mohammad Atiya, President & Secretary General of DePaul Model UN. “It can be hard entering college and trying to find your group of people, but Model UN is a space that welcomes people.”

It’s more than a space of international politics or diplomacy, he adds, “it’s a split space to come and learn and find a new hobby. It’s a chance to be part of a community that is like minded and wants to help others find success.”

The DeMUN conference experience

DePaul’s DeMUN high school conference provides several opportunities for students to gain experience in United Nations committees and debates by testing their skills in foreign policy, international affairs and diplomacy.

“To be able to put yourself in the position of another country and try to represent it authentically is one of the real values of participating,” says Erik Tillman, professor and faculty advisor for the Model UN student group. “As students represent other countries from around the world, they begin to see how these countries differ from the U.S. — they might be smaller, less developed economically or have less military power — and how the rest of the world might look from that country’s point of view,” Tillman says.

DePaul Model UN and its DeMUN conference stand out from other universities in many ways, from their focused high school involvement to their conference themes, say Tillman and Atiya. This year’s conference focused on a nontraditional theme, with student organizing committees focused on the Arab Spring, offering students a chance to interact with current crises in other countries.

“Standard committees of Model UN usually focus on Security Councils and various General Assembly committees, so the Arab Spring committee DeMUN organized was unique and offered a rich and rewarding set of committees. Rather than representing governments, students represented actual cabinet members of two countries governments,” Tillman says.

DePaul’s Model UN’s determination to start a high school conference for students in the Chicagoland area and beyond is another aspect  that sets it apart from other universities. While most Model UN collegiate student groups focus on participating in collegiate conferences, DePaul students wanted to come together and offer this experience to Chicago students.

“To pull off a high school conference like this you’ve got to have a large group of committed, organized students who can make it happen, and a supportive environment in a lot of ways both from the university itself and Chicago high schoolers. It's a tremendous amount of work, and I think all the credit goes to Mohammad, Marilyn Goodridge and the other student leaders. It's an incredible undertaking, and they've done such a great job with it,” Tillman says.

Beyond the conference lives a Model UN community 

Organizations like Model UN for students like Atiya allow them not only to form a community but also a chance to share their experiences with others. Atiya was involved in his high school Model UN but didn’t envision it for himself once in college. However, during his freshman year, his passion for Model UN was rejuvenated once he saw the potential the DePaul group had to bring the collegiate Model UN experience to high school students.

Making the event happen is no easy feat, from gaining reservations and approval from the university, to planning and researching Chicago public schools to reach out to and partner with for participation. Many of the DePaul students in the group at the time never hosted a large-scale high school conference and didn’t know how to judge or participate in debates.

The group’s attention to detail hasn’t gone unnoticed by high school advisors and students who attended the previous year as attendance rose from about 350 in year one to 450 in year two.

“There are conferences in the Chicagoland area that are only one day that have been doing it for 20 years,” says Atiya, who is in DePaul’s 3+3 program and will attend DePaul College of Law upon completion of his undergraduate degree. “This is only our second year, and my hope is that it continues to grow, to be something bigger than what it is right now. It’s a joy to expose DePaul to high school students who could choose our university when the time comes.”