Cal State Long Beach’s Model United Nations (MUN) team returned home after winning an award at the three-day Harvard National Model United Nations Conference in Boston, Mass., that began Feb. 15.
CSULB’s MUN delegation member Guergana Angleova represented Vietnam at the Harvard MUN’s Economic and Financial Committee.
Kristen Kloster, MUN’s club president, said Angleova won one of three Honorable Mention Awards out of 250 other delegates from top universities around the world.
MUN is a synthesis of research and debate in an effort to explore and ultimately discover solutions to the issues presented in front of the United Nations and its associated bodies, according to MUN’s Web site.
In a simulation of the United Nations committees, CSULB’s MUN team represents the policies of a particular country or countries, as stated on MUN’s site.
Kloster said that this year’s delegation was a bit larger and diverse. The Harvard delegation had students from Bulgaria, Turkmenistan, Chile, Jordan and four Californian natives – one from Long Beach Polytechnic High School, Kloster said.
The 12-member team has representation from the political science, international studies, history, engineering and German departments. Kloster said the students met and researched over their winter break, which found them stretched over four different continents.
“We are very thankful for teleconferencing and Internet, along with the dedication and hard work of all the delegates for their outstanding representation of California State University, Long Beach at such an internationally prestigious academic event,” Kloster said.
MUN’s next conference will be held this Saturday at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Following that, the team is headed to San Francisco for a Model United Nations of the Far West Conference in April.