Teaching Leadership and Teamwork

It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a lot of disruption in higher education. At the same time, however, it also afforded a welcome opportunity for institutional reflection. For Moravian, that resulted in what the university calls the Elevate experience: an education that involves challenging academics, global perspectives, hands-on career exploration and support, and cutting-edge Apple technology.

The latest gem in the Elevate crown, the RISE program (which stands for Reflection, Integrity, and Skill-Building to Elevate students), turned out its first cohort after officially commencing in Spring 2023.

The RISE program includes two quarter-unit academic courses and a half-unit final course in which students work in cohort teams in collaboration with one of Moravian’s community partners.

Both of the quarter-unit courses take students on a journey into teamwork and leadership in a liberal arts context while exploring their knowledge and insights through team experiences and actual leadership positions within the campus community.

Since the RISE program involves coursework outside of one’s major, it is Pass/No Credit, so there is no impact on a student’s GPA. And as long as the program’s courses are taken within the permitted 9 units per academic year, there are no additional tuition costs.

Associate Professor of Psychology Robert Brill, who has a background in industrial organizational psychology and is an expert on leadership and teamwork, is the director of the RISE program.

“The first course includes a lot of self-assessment and reflection exercises that guide students as they engage with teamwork and leadership models and concepts introduced by faculty from a variety of disciplines,” Brill says. “The second course is all about skill-building in competencies such as communication, decision-making, empathy, leadership, and emotional intelligence, among other areas.”

The final part of the RISE program, what Brill refers to as a kind of “capstone team internship experience,” has students work as part of a team to collaborate with one of Moravian’s community partners to foster positive change in Bethlehem.

“We did a lot of work in the first course on self-development—identifying what you do really well and what you need to work on,” says health sciences major Ava Piotti ’25. “It was really helpful, because before we progressed into the teamwork portion, we had to be able to reflect on ourselves.”

In addition to various worksheets and reflective-style essays, the RISE program’s first two courses also employed innovative simulation activities, which Piotti had not experienced before. “We did a Mount Everest simulation on the computer where your team had to climb the mountain, and each person had a job: one was an environmental expert, another was a nurse who supplied the oxygen and medicine. The whole team had to work together to track the weather, everyone’s health, and other details related to the climb.”

Louis Spann ’26, a computer science major with an economics minor, was thrilled to be able to participate in the RISE program. In high school, he had enjoyed his character-building experiences with the Boy Scouts and the Dale Carnegie leadership program.

“With RISE, I learned a lot about not only myself but also leadership,” Spann says, “especially during the last part of the program, where we worked on a project with a community organization. That was probably one of the most unique experiences I’ve had thus far, inside or outside of college.

“Not only did we have to define what problem we needed to solve for the company, but we had to figure out a way to solve that problem and, at the end, provide a deliverable that the organization was most likely going to use,” Spann explains.

His team’s project was to come up with a marketing plan for Dirt Work Solutions, an excavation and paving company located in nearby Slatington.

Piotti and her team also worked on developing a marketing plan. Theirs was for Moravian Academy’s Lehigh Valley Summer Bridge Program, which is geared toward local rising seventh graders who are passionate about eventually going to college.

Spann and Piotti wholeheartedly recommend the program to other Moravian students. “I would recommend this program to students who are already established leaders on campus looking to grow their skills, as well as those who are interested in becoming leaders on campus but are not sure how to go about it. RISE is a great first stepping stone,” says Piotti.

“I would definitely recommend the program to other students,” Spann says. “I think leadership in and of itself is something important to learn. Even if you don’t become a leader officially someday, there are so many other different ways to be a leader for yourself, especially for self-advocacy—and that’s just so powerful.”—Steve Neumann ’94, G’18