The Culver Challenge Course is an innovative, dynamic workshop of discovery and development. The challenge experience lays the foundational skills necessary for each member of your staff to become an effective, contributing component of an energetic team.

Both on-site and off-site programs are designed to help your staff think outside the box, highlight each individual’s strengths, and show how those strengths affect the team dynamic. Using a series of experience-based activities, Culver’s facilitators will help guide your staff in identifying and confronting their personal and the group’s limitations. Utilizing a combination of physical and mental problem-solving programs, the Challenge Course allows participants to explore levels of communications and trust in themselves and the group.

The Culver Challenge Course learning objectives include:

• Fostering experimentation and risk-taking
• Appreciating diversity in ideas and people
• Brain-storming
• Encouraging trial-and-error methods in a safe environment
• Increasing personal and leadership effectiveness
• Planning
• Freely expressing opinions and feelings
• Nurturing creativity

The Culver Challenge Course also allows your staff to enjoy the day in an active, fun, and exciting atmosphere, giving them the chance to become closer with colleagues in a totally different environment.

Flexible Programs

The flexibility of the program allows you to craft an experience that will suit your staff’s needs, whether it is a half-day experience or a multi-day adventure/retreat for all ages and physical abilities.

The Culver Challenge Course sits on two beautiful, heavily wooded sites. The course locations are remote enough to allow the group to focus on its task while enjoying peaceful surroundings, but is close enough for group members to visit the historic Culver Academies campus and Lake Maxinkuckee.

There are more than 20 high and low course elements. The low course includes elements suitable for everyone ages 8 to 80 and many are handicapped-accessible. Certain low course elements can be moved inside in case of inclement weather or if you would like to schedule a winter retreat.

The high course includes elements for all fitness levels and abilities, from the couch potato to the rock-climbing enthusiast.

Housing options are available both on and off campus, along with a full range of dining options. Conference space with Internet access also is available on the Culver Academies campus.

During your staff’s off-hours, there are a variety of recreational activities available including a fully-equipped fitness center, indoor and outdoor running tracks, indoor swimming pool, three basketball courts, and indoor and outdoor tennis courts. Plus, there is Lake Maxinkuckee, the second-largest natural lake in Indiana.

Off Site Programs

The Culver Challenge Course also can be brought to your company’s location. Many of our low course and problem-solving programs travel easily. If you are interested in having a challenge workshop done in conjunction with a retreat, a program can be designed to fit your agenda.

Off-site programs include:

• Setting goals.
• Improving group processes
• Catalyzing and energizing group efforts

Our staff is prepared to develop a program that fits both your staff’s time and space limitations. The basic concepts of getting your staff to think outside the box, highlighting individual strengths, and showing how those strengths benefit the team dynamic will still be met.

Training

The Challenge Course has long been used by Culver Academies as an educational tool in the Center for Leadership. Established in 1986 to enhance leadership opportunities students experience on campus, the curriculum includes the development of communication skills, group dynamics, conflict resolution, plus techniques and methods for planning, human relations, motivation, and time management.

The Challenge Course also has been used to help new students bond as a class, bring athletic teams closer together, and as an ancillary teaching tool in other educational departments.

Adult and school groups also have taken advantage of the Culver Challenge Course to assist their staffs and students develop skills in critical thinking and problem solving.