Theory into Practice: The Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation Program
Each fall semester, I have the honor of welcoming students and faculty to Washington, DC, to the annual European Union Simulation sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation Consortium (MEUSC). Our three-day, intercollegiate experiential learning exercise allows college sophomores, juniors, and seniors to experience the complex and dynamic institutions and policy making process of today’s EU and understand more fully current issues challenging European integration. Students essentially take their academic/classroom knowledge of the EU and put it into practice in the simulation of the European Council, EU Parliament, two configurations of the Council of Ministers, and the EU Commission.
Over time, we have continuously sought to engage students in discussions that are both current and topical in actual EU decision-making circles. Thus, our students have debated such issues as:
· Security and defense questions regarding terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks
· EU bilateral relations with both Turkey and Russia
· The EU’s recent efforts to stabilize the Eurozone
· The EU’s response to its own recent migration and refugee crisis
As I open our program each year, I tell a brief story about our founding: in Fall 1993, three faculty from three colleges brought approximately three dozen students to Washington for the first such event for our consortium, which was held at the now closed Holiday Inn-Georgetown. As I recall for each group, simulation meetings were held in hotel guest rooms, as those first faculty advisors and schools could not afford the expense of hotel conference space. However, they did visit the EU Member State embassies that those students were representing to receive a formal briefing on the issue being debated in the simulation, which remains a hallmark preparatory component of the MEUSC program that all MEUSC students have experienced each year since. They also initiated our collaboration with the then Delegation of the European Commission, now the Delegation of the European Union, which has help our consortium in myriad ways over many years.
This month, MEUSC will celebrate its 25th anniversary. We have now relocated the simulation across the river at the Holiday Inn Arlington At Ballston and essentially take over the hotel’s conference space in any given year. Representing between 13–15 EU Member States, MEUSC faculty and students now total approximately 150 people from 12 to 15 schools.
Preparing students for and engaging them in such a high-level and demanding learning experience, through an upper-division Political Science seminar that is akin to a graduate-level course, requires a significant amount of effort from a faculty advisor like me. Moreover, I am privileged to have interacted with a great group of dedicated college educators since 1996, when I brought my first delegation of University of Scranton students to the MEUSC program. We work as a dedicated team to provide a valuable educational experience for our students and to maintain the legitimacy and quality of our EU simulation program. I, like my colleagues, have been asked more than once: “Why do you do this each year?”
My answer is fairly simple: the European Union is, arguably, one of the most significant international developments of the 20th/21st century.
Furthermore, to paraphrase a political officer at the Austrian Embassy who briefed my students a few years ago, the EU remains as the greatest ongoing peace project in world history. My MEUSC colleagues and I, thus, maintain our students need to understand how the EU has developed and operates, and why European integration continues to advance, despite its many challenges, stumbles, and crises large and small along the way.
Over my 21-year experience with the MEUSC program, my students consistently respond positively to my fundamental supposition about the EU’s importance. I was not alone among my faculty peers in hearing from former EU simulation students when the Brexit vote occurred in June 2016; they wanted to know what had happened and what would happen in the wake of that critical event. Similarly, I have former students who still know their EU Parliamentary or Ministerial alter-egos years after the simulation event, and who still can recall details from simulated EU debates about carbon emissions standards, or food safety and labeling standards, or human trafficking abuses, or the Nord Stream pipeline — just to name a few!
Only a couple of months ago, I saw a former student from my first EU simulation program class, at a University of Scranton reunion weekend; it was the first time I had spoken to John since I wrote a law school recommendation for him a few years after his graduation. True to form, he eagerly recalled playing the role of Göran Persson, the then prime minister of Sweden, and protecting Swedish interests in a simulation debate about EU environmental policy, barely a year after Sweden’s accession to EU membership. He also relayed that the EU simulation was the best learning experience of his entire college career — a comment that I have heard from countless students over many years. It is that excitement for learning about the EU, culminating in the vehicle of the EU simulation itself, which continues to drive my MEUSC colleagues and me year after year.
This story is part of the #EUatSchool series, showcasing the wide array of EU educational programs, grants, and competitions open to Americans. From Erasmus+ to Euro Challenge to Kids Euro Festival, each week we’ll publish new stories written by the high schoolers, college students, researchers, and educators who have experienced and benefitted from these programs first-hand. Find new stories on Medium each week.
EU simulations (Model EU) are an excellent way for high school and college students to learn first-hand about how EU institutions work. There are many ways to run Model EU — to download our Model EU toolkits, click here.
