Pitt’s European Union Center of Excellence Wins National Award for Outstanding Outreach Activity

The European Union Center of Excellence (EUCE) at the University of Pittsburgh has been awarded the EUCE Outstanding Outreach Activity Award for its 2011 Model European Union program for high school students.

In December 2011, more than 100 students in grades 9-12 from nine Pittsburgh-area schools participated in the University‘s daylong Model EU simulation. Students assumed the roles of presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers and engage in intense negotiations over controversial issues facing the EU.

“We are especially proud of this award because Pitt’s Model EU simulation is an EUCE team effort and because it is awarded by a committee made up of fellow EUCE members and diplomats,” said Ronald Linden, director of Pitt’s EUCE/European Studies Center and a professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Political Science.

The award review committee—comprising representatives from the Polish embassy, the Austrian Consulate in Chicago, and the Delegation of the European Union to the United States—tapped Pitt’s EUCE for the award. Pitt’s EUCE will be featured in promotional materials to be distributed domestically and throughout the European Union in an effort to promote EUCEs in the United States.

For more information about Pitt’s EUCE, visit www.ucis.pitt.edu/euce.