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Building a Learning Community with Art and Creativity
How do you build a learning community? With glue, ink, foam, and an openness to creative thinking. That is just what the new two-year MBA students discovered as they dove into team building activities during their transition module at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh and Oglebay Resort and Conference Center, Wheeling, W.Va. Multicultural Learning Teams are the perfect setting for solving complex problems, but first team members must build camaraderie and other valuable lessons in working together.
With 129 students representing 13 countries, the incoming full-time MBA class is brimming with diversity, which makes for great problem-solving potential. At the Children's Museum event, Katz teams learned how to better confront challenges they are likely to face in graduate school as well as in the business world. Together, teams designed logos, created a piece of a larger art installation, built water-worthy vessels to race, helped teammates race through a maze, took part in a scavenger hunt, and learned the powerful art of storytelling.
To demonstrate the importance of the parts on the whole and of creativity in general, Katz called on the local creative efforts of Artists Image Resource (AIR). Teams posed for digital photos that were made first into transparencies and then into silkscreens. Teams embellished the outlines and silkscreened them in black creating a composite image. AIR will combine the pieces to form a banner installation of the MBA Class of 2010 that will be displayed in Mervis Hall.
To put dynamic decision making to the test, teams crafted boats to withstand attacks from air cannons, whirlpools, and the dreaded Viper remote control speed boat. Teammates also directed one another to navigate a vertical maze and worked together to gather answers to a scavenger hunt. One answer could only be discovered by joining arms under cascading letters of Text Rain to gather the words of a poem. Storyteller, Alan Irvine used The Parable of the Sadhu, from Harvard Business Review, to impress upon students the craft and power of a good story.
The next day was a relaxing retreat to Oglebay Resort where students golfed; swam; fished; and explored the resort's museum, garden, and zoo. An evening of elegant dining and enthusiastic dancing was followed in the morning by a workshop by James Craft, professor of business administration, who took students to the moon to bring home the message of building a learning community. Though their mission over the next 20 months likely won't take them to the moon, the new Multicultural Learning Teams are ready to take on the MBA program at Katz together.
Article and photos by Lauren Gogal, Communication Manager, MBA Programs
