The first Circle U. MUN brought together 73 participants from 11 universities across Europe, including BA and MA students, PhD candidates, researcher and professors, each taking different roles during the five-day simulation. In addition to participants from higher education institutions, there were also 11 students from the Institut Saint-André, a Brussels-based high school. Including high school students in this kind of initiatives is a way to connect them to higher education and an illustration of a sustainable education approach.
MUN simulations are a popular activity gathering thousands of students worldwide every year at all educational level. With support from the Circle U. Seed Funding scheme, Min Reuchamps, a professor of political science at the University of Louvain – together with colleagues from the Circle U. Think and Do Tank and the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels (Françoise Longrée et Dominique d’Harveng) – proposed and organised this activity for students and researchers at Circle U. and other universities.
Co-creating Tomorrow’s Higher Education
Students were grouped into five committees, all connected directly or indirectly to sustainable education, and each chaired by two students with the assistance of PhD candidates and professors, who acted as experts. The committees were:
- UNESCO: Sustainable education for all
- UNICEF: Children and sustainable education
- SOCHUM: Democracy and sustainable education
- UNEP: Climate and sustainable education
- WHO: Global health and sustainable education
Each student represented a country (among UN members) in one of the above-mentioned committees and acted as a Delegate for that country. Each Delegate did research on the topics of their Committee and produced a Position Paper reflecting the position of the country they represented as well as new proposals in terms of innovative calls for action.
Delegates acted as a collaborative team rather than as a competitive one. As such, they had the opportunity to make teaching and learning methods more efficient, better adapted to real-life challenges and therefore more sustainable.
Min Reuchamps said: “Simulations such as Model United Nations (MUN) are a wonderful way to learn and to co-create tomorrow’s higher education. The first edition of the Circle U. MUN on sustainable education brought together students who have never met before in a learning experience that they will never forget.”
MUN Simulations and European University Alliances
This a practical and empowering exercise in that students get to explore transferable skills and develop their self-confidence: they get to experience the perspective of the country they represent and how the various perspectives interact at global level. All of this within a collaborative environment.
This is an interesting analogy with what European University Alliances are attempting to do: find innovative ways to do education and research through collaboration around common challenges.
