Five MPA Students Compete in NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Challenge, One Heads to the Finals

Big congratulations are in order to current online format student Tiffany Oliva and her team for winning 1st place in the North America NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Challenge competition held last month. Her team will compete in the global competition tomorrow, Friday, April 16th. You can watch her team compete in the final round of this year’s competition, which will be live-streamed here.

Oliva, along with current MPA online format students Jeana Taylor, Meredith Marlier, Jane Kaufmann, and on-campus format student Chase Loudermelt were selected to represent the UNC MPA program at the 2021 Student Simulation, a day-long event that allows graduate students in public policy and related fields across the world to test their skills on real-world data.

Each year, the Center for Leadership Simulation and Gaming develops an original participatory simulation on a topic of relevance. This year’s topic was, not surprisingly, pandemic oriented. Past topics have included Global Migration and Sustainable Cities. The simulations employ a realistic situation, and participating students are randomly place in teams of five. Each team, under limited time, is provided information on the problem. They are then tasked with creating a policy memo and giving a presentation, which is judged and scored by subject area experts.

Professional development opportunities like this allow for skill building in areas of negotiation, decision making, and teamwork. “We encourage students to participate in professional development opportunities such as the NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Challenge because it helps students apply theory to practice and gain important skills to support career growth,” said Allison Binkley, Associate Director for Career Services and Professional Development for the MPA program.

We appreciate all of our UNC MPA students, and we would like to especially recognize our four online students and one on-campus student who participated in this opportunity even though the competition was held virtually.

Oliva was placed with students from VCU, the University of Missouri, and NYU.

“The NASPAA-Batten competition was an opportunity for me to apply some of the skills I have learned in UNC’s MPA program to make quick, team decisions about economic, health, and equity policy to contain a pandemic outbreak,” she said. “It was a fun learning experience, and I am excited to have moved on to compete in the global round of the competition with our team of students from NYU, VCU, and the University of Missouri.”

Tune in Friday, April 16, 2021 to watch the top four teams compete in the final round of this year’s NASPAA-Batten Student Simulation Competition on Pandemic 2.0. This event will be live-streamed here via YouTube.