The following policy should be considered to be in effect for all IDIA-sponsored conferences, including Rutgers Model United Nations, Philadelphia Model United Nations, and Rutgers Model Congress, unless otherwise stated in conference materials. Other organizations may have different policies for how awards are decided – you should check with the organizers of your particular conference.
IDIA’s Awards Policy
The Institute for Domestic and International Affairs, Inc. (IDIA) is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation dedicated to providing innovative educational opportunities to students of all ages so they may better understand their role in global and domestic civil society.
IDIA’s primary programming consists of diplomacy simulations and debate conferences designed to activate students’ critical thinking and cooperative problem solving skills. Like any debate program, Model United Nations and Model Congress are inherently competitive. Awards like the ones granted at the end of most of our conferences exist to recognize those students who most effectively advanced the conversation during the course of the conference.
However, it has long been both the informal culture and formal policy of IDIA conferences to emphasize compromise, cooperation, research, and substantive development in a much more significant way than pure competition amongst students. This principal is embedded in our staff training procedures.
We are proud to be able to recognize the hard work of an exceptional group of students each weekend. But it is IDIA’s official stance that the learning opportunity available to all students at our programs, and their willingness to avail themselves of this opportunity, should be each participant’s focus, rather than whether or not they win an award.
IDIA staff are trained to consider elements of research preparedness and substantive contribution when deciding which students are awarded for their work. They are further trained to de-emphasize the importance of rhetorical flare, combative debate, and/or conversational dominance (except when warranted by the simulation aspect of the committee). Of course, disagreements will naturally arise, and the ability to defend one’s position against a counterproposal is important. However, the skills weighed most heavily for awards are: resolution writing, consensus building, and understanding the intricacies not only of the topics under discussion, but also of the United Nations as a whole in order to propose specific and feasible mock-legislation.
NOTE: The conference manager is free to adjust this policy and implement his or her own approach to awards for the conference he or she manages. All awards decisions are made at the sole discretion of the committee directors and undergraduate conference manager, in consultation with the Program Director.
Individual Awards Rubric
In each committee at the conference, our extensively trained staff will determine committee-level award winners based upon the specific criteria found in the rubric below. These committee award winners not only are effective debaters, but excel at resolution writing, consensus building, and understanding the intricacies not only of the topics under discussion, but also of the United Nations as a whole.
This rubric is provided as a resource and meant to be a helpful guide for students looking to make the most out of the conference experience. It should not be considered a “judges card” for the purposes of winning awards. Ideally, each student in a committee – including those who do no receive a physical award – should endeavor to reach the goals outlined here for their own development as young leaders.
Delegation-Level Awards
In addition to individual awards for delegates from each committee, most IDIA conferences also feature delegation-level awards given to the schools whose collective participants performed at an exceptionally high level.
These awards, often termed “Best Large Delegation”, “Outstanding Large Delegation”, “Best Small Delegation”, Outstanding Small Delegation”, and so on, are awarded on a point system that weighs the number and type of awards earned by each student from the school against the total number of students that school brings to the conference. The per-student score is used to rank the school against other schools within it’s category. The top-ranked school in each category is awarded the “Best” delegation award for the size category, and second place is awarded the “Outstanding”.
The categorization of schools into small, medium and large occurs on a floating scale based around the median size of schools attending that year’s conference. The exact distinction between large, medium, and small is made at the sole discretion of the undergraduate conference manager in consultation with the Program Director.
