ABINGTON, Pa. — For five intense days last week, Penn State Abington students worked like colleagues instead of classmates.
Joined by students from Germany's Hof University, they spent hours on campus developing recommendations for a real-world challenge presented by a health-care technology company while navigating tight deadlines, client expectations and the complexities of international teamwork. By the end, they were able to develop leadership, communication and problem-solving skills employers demand.
The students had the opportunity to move beyond classroom learning and take on the collaborative work many are likely to encounter in their careers. Through the campus-to-career initiative known as the Abington Experience, students gain hands-on learning opportunities that strengthen career readiness while helping them apply classroom knowledge in professional settings.
"I think this experience was especially meaningful because this type of work is very close to what I will be doing after I graduate," said Jonathan Eveth Alavez Reyes, a computer science major.
Students broke into multidisciplinary teams to tackle a business problem provided by AZRA AI, a health-care technology and enterprise software company. To succeed, they had to quickly learn about the industry, understand the client's needs, and develop recommendations they could defend before Ryan King, a 2010 Penn State Abington alumnus and the company's chief technology officer, along with faculty from Abington and Hof.
But first, they had to lead.
Students organized team discussions, navigated competing viewpoints, managed deadlines, and supported one another as they worked through complex questions. The experience mirrored the real world, where leaders guide teams through uncertainty, adapt to changing information, and build consensus around a shared goal.
For Alavez Reyes, lessons came early. He said his team realized it had developed an approach based on assumptions that did not fully align with the client's expectations. They reassessed their work, asked new questions and adjusted their strategy.
"One of my biggest takeaways was how important it is to make assumptions early, but also to test them quickly and be willing to change direction when they are wrong," he said. "Understanding the problem is often just as important as building the solution. Research, stakeholder conversations, testing assumptions, and being willing to pivot are all part of building something useful."
Working across majors and international borders added another layer of complexity. Students in business and technology learned how to communicate with teammates whose educational and cultural approaches differed from their own.
For cybersecurity analytics and operations major David Baram, the competition expanded his understanding of effective leadership and provided an opportunity to put classroom knowledge into practice.
"This project was able to show me that even though I've worked to find technical solutions, if no one can understand it or trust it, then it probably won't be successful," he said. "This experience will help me be more open to different perspectives and show that, even though we come from different backgrounds, we were able to collaborate and work together."
The competition culminated in professional presentations where they presented their findings.
"I came away more confident in my ability to take an unfamiliar problem, break it down, work with a team to understand it, and turn it into something tangible in a short amount of time," Alavez Reyes said. "Every new project is another opportunity to get better at asking the right questions, listening to people with different perspectives, moving quickly when necessary, and understanding when an idea needs to change."
Alumni connection leads to opportunity
The project originated with King, who maintained his connection to the campus through Joe Oakes, associate teaching professor of computer science and information technology and program chair for the cybersecurity analytics and operations major. Along with Peter Hornberger, director of the Abington LaunchBox and assistant teaching professor of business, Oakes created an opportunity for students to engage in a business exercise while exploring opportunities in a growing field.
"The case competition demonstrated the value of experiential learning by giving students the opportunity to learn by doing, collaborating across disciplines and cultures, and solving real-world problems," Oakes said.