Public Policy Graduate Student Wins Award in Global Competition

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School of Public Policy (SPP) student Dan Desrochers and teammates from other universities have won the best communications strategy award at the 2018 NASPAA‐Batten Student Simulation Competition, an international contest for graduate students.

Desrochers was also part of a team that was a finalist in the overall competition, a partnership between the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) and the University of Virginia’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

More than 500 students from 159 schools and 27 nations took part in this year’s contest, held at 15 sites around the world. Desrochers and fellow SPP graduate student Estefania Malvido competed at New York’s Baruch College. Both are in SPP’s master of public policy and administration program.

The annual competition is a computer-based contest in which participants must develop policy recommendations to address an international crisis—in this year’s competition, an influenza pandemic. Students are assigned to teams, each representing a fictional country, and provided realistic data about their nation’s demographics, economy and other key factors. Each competitor assumes a government leadership role, then the group sets to work, considering various policy options to address the pandemic.

Time is compressed—teams are given one hour, representing months of real-world time—calling for quick, decisive action. At the end of the hour, the teams are reassembled for three more rounds, with participants assigned to new roles and new countries. “It’s quite stressful when you’re watching the time tick by, and seeing graphs showing the number of people being infected and dying,” Desrochers said.

This was Malvido’s second time taking part in the contest. The competition has been a great opportunity to network with other public policy students from around the world and to put into practice the skills and theory she’s learned at SPP, she said.

“What I found most challenging was not panicking as a group,” Malvido said.

Given the pace of the competition, decisions needed to be made quickly: should the nation allocate more funds to vaccines? Shut down schools? Close borders? As infection rates climbed, she noted, it was tempting to take dramatic measures in response. But teams needed to take a broader view as well, considering how their responses would affect not just the mortality rate, but also the economy and government stability—for instance, would the nation’s economy suffer if parents were forced to miss work because of school closures?