Political Science Educator: volume 27, issue 1
Interviews
This interview is the second installment in a Q&A series focused on education and politics. Matt Evans, Professor of Political Science at Northwest Arkansas Community College, interviewed Dr. Cheryl Van Den Handel about Model United Nations as an experiential learning rework. Dr. Van Den Handel works as an Associated Professor of Political Science at Northeastern State University (in Tahlequah, Oklahoma), and for a decade has advised her school’s Model UN team. She teaches courses on American politics, comparative politics, foreign policy, gender and politics, and international relations. Her research focuses on women in developing countries, women’s movements in red states within the US, and immersive learning in political science. This interview took place on Feb. 24, 2023 at the Midwest Model UN conference, and was edited for clarity and space. Read this first installment here.
Matt Evans, Northwest Arkansas Community College
What motivated you to get involved with Model UN?
I had never been at a school where it was at, and during my time in graduate school, one of the topics that we talked about was how to make our discipline more immersive, more interactive. When I was hired at NSU, they had Model UN. My predecessor was running it.
I started sitting in on conferences in 2011, but I came with a team in 2012. It became my baby, and by then I had learned what it was. I basically had to figure it out on my own because at that time there weren’t any tools to assist new advisors, so once I got here and that Ruby [Libertus, the Model UN advisor at Oral Roberts University] told me there’s this UNA group in Tulsa[1], and she was a member, and asked me to join. That took me a little while to do, but Ruby helped me figure out how to run a Model UN team. Once the digital age really became a thing, UNA USA put materials up, and then we went to Chicago to American Model UN[2] and I grabbed all of their materials that I could and began working on improving how I taught when at NSU.
In terms of Model UN, there are probably different models for how you setting it up in terms of class or club. How do you approach doing it at your school?
We are half-class, half-club because there’s this new thing with financial aid that came down a couple of years ago that if a course is not part of your discipline for your degree, financial aid won’t pay for it…We were totally dependent on a budget that wasn’t being generated by income from students, so then we lost our budget. Majors and minors can take the one-credit course for three consecutive semesters and get a whole three credit[s] for an upper division elective; people who are not in our discipline are on the club side and they don’t have to enroll because financial aid won’t pay for it. They constitute the club side so that we can pull in other disciplines—which is what it used to do, is to go and knock on doors and try to get students from other disciplines because the UN has so many different issues and so many different disciplines and fields and problems. Now the class side is graded and they have the same things they have to turn in. It’s just a little more formalized now…they’re paying for the credit so that at least is pulling some student fees into the program.
You mentioned that you didn’t have a lot of resources for Model UN when you first started, but now you do have some resources. What sort of resources? What might you suggest faculty looking to figure out how to get resources?
I do use the Council for Foreign Relations Model Diplomacy[3], I use the United Nation Association’s My Diplomat[4] resources, and then I have a few small simulations that I’ve written myself. A really, creepy story is that I had developed an earthquake scenario on Java, and then the following year, the big earthquake occurred at Banda Aceh. It was creepy.
Some of the Model UN students focused on position papers. Are there other sorts of things that you’re assessing?
A lot of it has to do with participation in making the effort right. I teach them how you write a position paper. It’s like, here’s the model. We would talk back and forth verbally about what would go in the position paper. “Okay, so now take a few minutes and write down what you just said”—I’m helping them to think through the process and think about how to think about the process. They spend time in our class time to do part of their research, part of their writing, and submit it to our Google Drive folder, and from there I assigned points. I am not full-out grading, you know. I am encouraging them to learn the skills.
So they have to turn in a position paper for each of their topics. They have to write a full resolution together in the Google Drive and that means that I can see them writing because their names popped up and we’ve got all got our laptops…then they’re required to attend a conference in the fall and a conference in the spring. I don’t grade the conference. It’s that you attend and you learn and you make the effort. If they came and they stayed in the room the whole time they participate, that’s 30% of the grade. For roll call, you fully participate. Otherwise you come, you show up. I’m roaming around, I see you making an effort. You know you’re not sitting at the table like this [doing nothing]. I mean, I’ve had students who were very introverted and over the time they were with Model UN between freshman and senior, they came out of their shell, right, so you don’t have to write this down. I believe [in] immersive learning and I provide them with the support that they need a sympathetic ear. They can ask me questions if I think it’s appropriate. I will answer those questions, or I will say something like: “Where do you think you can find the information?” By this point, they should know where to find the information for whatever it is, and they do. They haven’t asked me a single question about where to find information on something because we’ve covered all of that before. We got here, went out, and they have resources that they put in the Google Drive for themselves that they can refer to while they’re here, so it’s like a digital notebook for them to use, and they construct it.
What sort of resources that you give your students? Guidelines for researching? Do you have them read like books like Karen Mingst UN book[5]? Do you give them like various places to look to find out about these policies?
Yeah, I make buying the book optional; most of them buy it anyway. I have the bookstore stock it. But I take them directly to the UN website and we go through all of the organs. We go through the [United Nations] Charter[6]. This is fall semester, and then we start talking about how to do the research: where to look, what kind of things you want. Once the background guides are available for whatever the first conference is, we dive into the background guides and I have them go to the links in the bibliography, and so we spend time going through where the information and of course the CIA World Factbook[7]. [The students] divide up their country study, and they decide what topic interests them most. You take control of filling in that space and then once it’s filled in, then we go around the table and everybody verbalizes, so part of this is public speaking. As we approach the conference, we’re working on learning how to write resolutions with the preambles and the operatives, and how to balance the preambles with the operatives. We practice giving one-minute speeches. We practice the parliamentary procedure. I have a gavel and block, so I play the dais [which is the chair that runs the committee in formal session]. They do dialogue, and then after this conference in February we spend the spring running through my small simulations and some from Model Diplomacy and it’s a lot of practice. Then we’re trying to recruit new members from our classrooms, so that’s more or less how we do it before this conference too.
In terms of like resolution writing and opening statements and parliamentary procedure, are you primarily having them look at like the UNA material and conference material? Or are other resources that students are looking at to help them prepare stuff?
I have some resources left from AMUN[8], and so I have some sheets…I use that I use the fairly-new resources that that MMUN[9] has now put in there – web pages, videos, and stuff. That was something that I worked on with them when I was on the board [of MMUN] was emphasizing a need for more resources so that students could see how does this work and what does it look like. For newbies, it’s really hard to explain to them exactly how this works and it’s like, you got to have the numbers. I can teach you all of the skills that you need and you’re going to practice them here but when you go to conference that’s when the light bulb is going to go on.
When you see how all these pieces really fit together. That’s why a conference is written into the syllabus…It’s like you have to understand that going to conference is part of this immersive learning experience. It’s between 30 and half of everything that they do. I mean they learn the skills, then they need to practice the skills and they need to go to the conference so they can see how this works.
In terms of faculty that are just getting started with Model UN, how do they get things rolling?
There are other faculty in their area that they could talk to, or [I] would say just google it.
I mean, today all you have to do is [use] Google, you know. If you’re in the upper Midwest or you’re on the West Coast or on the East Coast, there are conferences. I get emails from every conference around the country. I think one of the best things for a new faculty member is to show up and talk to other faculty, because all of us know where to look for things. If you’re at a new school, at least we have digital resources today that we can look for. They could contact the Secretary General or the Assistant Secretary General at any conference and say I’ve just inherited this. I’m brand new. Could you help me with some resources?
Students are learning about international organizations. What else do you think they gain from being part of Model UN?
I think the skills of interfacing with people face to face, learning to read body language and understanding people. That’s important. They practice negotiation skills, so we talk about negotiation.
We talk about diplomatic language—about how you might be irritated with someone, maybe you don’t like another delegate, but you have to be diplomatic and bite your tongue, and you can complain to me. That’s what I’m here for. Otherwise, practice the diplomacy of trying to understand the point of view of other countries, and when you disagree, be diplomatic in your disagreement. Because, remember, they’re supposed to be holding up the position of their country. Don’t make it personal.
To finish this interview, if you had some advice to give to yourself when you started, what would you tell yourself?
Be less afraid to reach out, really to people that you don’t know, and ask questions. When I started, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I learned more from the students and then when I got here, learned from Ruby [Libertus]. What I would say is show up the conference even if you don’t have students yet. Go to a conference and see how it works, and don’t be afraid to talk to other faculty.
Endnotes
[1] https://unausa.org/chapter/eastern-oklahoma-chapter/
[2] https://modeldiplomacy.cfr.org/
[3] https://unausa.org/model-un/my-diplomat/
[4] https://www.routledge.com/The-United-Nations-in-the-21st-Century/Mingst-Karns-Lyon/p/book/9780367481551
[5] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter
[6] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/
[7] https://www.amun.org/teach-mun/
[8] https://mmun.org/delegate-resources/
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. All issues of the The Political Science Educator can be viewed on APSA Connects Civic Education page.
Editors: Colin Brown (Northeastern University), Matt Evans (Northwest Arkansas Community College)
Submissions: editor.PSE.newsletter@gmail.com
APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021.
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