McKendree Invitational Model United Nations

McKendree hosts a Model United Nations conference for local high schools. We have held this conference for over 50 years! It is the sixth longest-running Model UN conference in the country!

Participating high schools include: Althoff, Belleville East, Belleville West, Christian Brothers College (MO), Collinsville, Freeburg, Gibault, Highland, Lebanon, Mascoutah, O'Fallon, Okawville, Pana, Springfield, Triad, Union (MO) and Valmeyer.

 

Upcoming Conferences

 

Fall 2023 November 13-14, 2023

Spring 2024 March 5-7, 2024

 

 

Alumni Testimonials

 

Attending Model UN in high school was the reason I went to McKendree. We live in a world where empathy, compromise, and understanding are lacking. Model UN provided a safe environment where a young person like me was able to learn how to assess the surrounding world, interact with strangers, navigate conflict, and strive to achieve some level of understanding so that solutions to difficult problems could be attempted.

Paul Woodruff, Class of 2007

Vice President – Community Development

St. Louis Community Credit Union

 

I had the good fortune to participate as a high schooler at McKendree’s conferences, which attracted me to McKendree University. The collegiate conferences I attended created an exciting mix of heated debate and breaking stalemates. You can learn a lot about problem solving and people through all night consensus building and emergency sessions. Model UN made me better at critically analyzing sources, understanding complex political and cultural systems, and sorting through often clashing viewpoints. These are tools that I still use in my career of historical interpretation. Model UN opens your worldview and makes you a more critical thinker.

Benjamin Pollard, Class of 2013

Site Interpretive Coordinator

Lewis & Clark State Historic Site

 

Model UN provides an opportunity to develop skills which few other programs can match.  Understanding competing views, stepping into the shoes of another nation, and learning to peacefully address the world's problems while practicing skills including public speaking, truly collaborative creation, and coming to understand compromise.  Our relationships,  businesses, politics, and world would be better with more people experiencing Model UN.

Steve Loftus, Class of 2008

Senior Cyber Security Engineer, UNCOMN

 

 

Please email modelun@mckendree.edu with any questions about our program.