Model United Nations team out does international competition once again
The Adams State University Model United Nations team once again shows up and stands out at the annual international collegiate Model United Nations conference.
The team participated in the virtual event last week and received Distinguished Delegation, the second-place award for the entire conference.
According to the Adams State MUN advisor Mari Centeno, Ph.D., professor of political science, it is the largest conference in the U.S. (New York Nationals). In 2021, over 3,000 delegates and roughly 400 universities from around the world were in attendance.
“NMUN, the world’s largest and oldest ongoing university-level Model UN, annually draws participants from more than 130 UN Member States to address current global issues,” Centeno said.
The delegates who represented Adams State included Lizz Serna, Zoe Serrano, Courtney Hocking and Makayla Huffman.
Hocking and Serrano each won an Outstanding Delegate in Committee.
“Meeting new people, experiencing different methods of delegating, and being able to demonstrate just how much our hard work we put in since October paid off is exciting,” Serrano says.
It was the team’s first ever conference and most of their competition had five times the number of delegates. “We had a small team, just four delegates, and we took second place overall,” Hocking says. “We beat them. This is a big deal and so is Adams State.”
These students are already extremely involved in extracurriculars, but they put in an extra three hours a week in-person training in addition to their own hours of topic research, writing position papers, and speech practice. “I am not easy on them, yet they dedicated themselves and demonstrated what Adams State students can do,” Centeno said. “I am probably the proudest I have ever been of our team.”
