Great team building games for a Boston university department: faculty and staff swap meetings for eight one minute table challenges and a live leaderboard.
A different kind of department meeting
University departments in Boston spend much of the academic year in committee meetings, office hours and grading. Faculty and staff share a hallway but rarely share a laugh. This session gives a department about 90 minutes of play: eight table top challenges, each ending at sixty seconds, run by an MC who keeps the tone warm. Professors, lecturers, advisors and administrators end up on the same teams, solving the same small problems.
Why academics enjoy it
Academic teams tend to love a puzzle. Pictures in Order asks a
Great team building games for a Boston university department: faculty and staff swap meetings for eight one minute table challenges and a live leaderboard.
A different kind of department meeting
University departments in Boston spend much of the academic year in committee meetings, office hours and grading. Faculty and staff share a hallway but rarely share a laugh. This session gives a department about 90 minutes of play: eight table top challenges, each ending at sixty seconds, run by an MC who keeps the tone warm. Professors, lecturers, advisors and administrators end up on the same teams, solving the same small problems.
Why academics enjoy it
Academic teams tend to love a puzzle. Pictures in Order asks a group to argue a scrambled comic strip into the right story, Tangram asks for a target shape from wooden pieces with nothing left over, and Mind Maze hides a path in a grid that exists only in shared memory. These great team building games reward reasoning and debate, which feels natural to people who teach for a living.
Completing the set
- Tilt A Cup, where a ball and a stack of cups test patience
- Dicey, a single tower of dice built one at a time
- Bolt Stacking, using only the non dominant hand
- Pipeline, a marble moved through every teammate's pipe into a bucket
- Leaning Tower, balloons and tape for the tallest freestanding tower
How the session runs
An icebreaker forms teams of 6 to 8, mixing ranks and roles, and groups of 80 or more are sorted by wristband. The MC calls every countdown, keeps a live leaderboard and runs tiebreakers. Points come from completion and speed. A facilitator supports every 20 to 30 guests, and at 75 or more guests the top three teams receive medals.
Campus friendly logistics
Seminar rooms, faculty lounges, campus event halls and hotel meeting rooms across New England all suit the table top format. It runs indoor or outdoor; a campus quad works on a calm day. The crew travels to Boston with every kit and handles setup and teardown, so the department administrator does not have to coordinate supplies.
Timing in the academic calendar
Many departments run it at the start of the fall term to welcome new faculty, or at the end of the spring term as a thank you before summer. It also fits a retreat day or a staff appreciation afternoon in Massachusetts. Because every round is one minute, the session ends on time and fits around classes.
Inclusive by design
The activity level is low, and nothing requires athletic ability. All ages and abilities take part comfortably, and no one has to speak in front of the room. That makes it one of the good team building activities for departments where comfort levels vary widely. It also works as team building for teachers and support staff who rarely get time together.
Customizing the rounds
Every program is customized. The facilitator can frame the session around collaboration, communication or change management, which can be helpful during curriculum redesigns or leadership transitions. Departments collecting team building activities ideas often like having a structured option that still feels light.
Educational discounts and scale
The provider offers discounts for educational groups, so ask when you request a date. The listing covers 15 to 1,000 guests, so it suits a small program or an entire college. Good team building games like these scale smoothly because stations multiply as the headcount grows, and the shared team bonding experiences carry into the semester. Colleagues who rarely cross paths outside committee work find themselves trading Mind Maze strategies in the hallway weeks later, and new faculty members gain a set of familiar faces right away. For departments that span several buildings, that kind of informal connection is hard to create any other way.
Book a campus date
Check availability for your Boston date and share headcount, venue and timing within the term. Pricing is transparent and shown before checkout. Plan four to six weeks ahead for weekday events. The provider has refined its team building games across thousands of teams since 2011.
