Develop lifelong skills and meet lifelong friends with the UCalgary Model UN Team
By Cameron Sauder, September 30 2025—
The UCalgary Model United Nations Team (UCMUNT) is about more than just cool, blue helmets — it’s an opportunity to gain professional skills in a fun, collaborative and competitive environment.
Model UN is a unique and wildly versatile extracurricular activity.
“It’s a simulation of the United Nations,” explains UCMUNT president Grayson Dart.
“Essentially, at its most general form, you’re assigned a country and then you’re given a topic, and you do research on your country, and you have to present and pursue goals and objectives to try and solve these problems through the lens of whatever country you’re assigned,” said Dart. “And so it involves a lot of public speaking [and] debate. You’re working with other people to try and solve these problems [and] you’re writing papers […] It’s a ton of fun, you meet lots of new people and learn a bunch of new skills.”
The primary component of MUN are the competitive conferences, whether they be local, national or even international. These are the events which the club centres itself around.
“We try to train people up, and we’ve historically had quite a strong reputation among other schools that participate in Model UN as a school that comes to compete. Not to scare anyone off, but we do like to win,” said Dart, noting that UCMUNT used to be quite renowned — led by opposition party leader Pierre Poilivre when he did his undergraduate degree here — and that despite a decline in membership due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the club has been steadily increasing and recovering.
There are no weekly meetings for the UCMUNT, but Dart said the team takes “great pride making sure that [students] feel ready for the conferences” through training sessions and by always being receptive to the questions and needs of club members, even if they’ve had no prior MUN experience.
“It can be quite daunting at first, knowing the format,” said Dart, but he emphasized that the team is there to help members learn everything they need to be successful when it comes to competition day.
Travelling conferences are paid for out of pocket by members, which is something that interested students will need to keep in mind, but Dart said that the club gets “special accommodation deals” with hotels and organizes the accommodations for members, so there’s less hassle.
The Students’ Union provides some funding for students travelling for academic purposes. However, the UCMUNT makes sure that there are smaller, more local conferences for students who can’t afford to travel across the country, such as a competition they’re aiming to host right here at UCalgary in November.
“Students should join because [they] get to learn a lot of valuable skills that [they] might not learn just taking your everyday courses,” said Dart. “The way to present effectively and sway people to join your cause, the way to communicate with people, make friends, form blocs, how to debate in an informal and a more formal setting as well as write papers under pressure. As well, just to make new friends, meet like-minded people — there’s a lot of information that I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t talked to a lot of the people that I met through Model UN.”
Mostly though, Dart said Model UN is “just a ton of fun,” and that he “would encourage everybody to come try it out [and] see if it’s for them.”Interested students can find out more about the UCMUNT by visiting their Instagram page or by emailing them at ucmuntcomm@gmail.com with any questions.