Recent executive orders have renewed attention to a perennial question on college campuses: How can we fund initiatives for interfaith cooperation and religious pluralism on campus?
Many administrators, faculty, and staff are taking stock of what feels like dwindling human and programmatic resources and wondering how to sustain key initiatives.
Interfaith America is highlighting our partnerships with eleven institutions who are innovating campus change in the midst of a changing landscape. These Inspiring Campus Change grantees are developing more comprehensive interfaith infrastructures, practices, and strategies to enable administrators, faculty, staff, and students to engage across lines of religious differences.
Each campus’s grant initiative is informed by the Interfaith, Spiritual, Religious, and Secular Campus Climate Index, or INSPIRES Index. Drawing on findings from IDEALS research, the Index measures and evaluates an institution’s efforts to create a welcoming climate for people who orient around religion differently.
By completing the INSPIRES Index, campus leaders can assess what they are currently doing and what they could accomplish in the future to improve campus climate in areas like religious accommodations, institutional behaviors, extracurricular and academic engagement, and space for support and expression. The results from this instrument can inspire leaders to make meaningful improvements to campus culture regarding spiritual and religious needs. The campuses involved in the Inspiring Campus Change Grant are using their Index results to inform context-specific projects that promote religious pluralism and interfaith learning across their institutions.
The 2024-2025 Inspiring Campus Change grantee campuses include Alvernia University, American River College, Austin Community College, Drake University, Le Moyne College, Lewis University, Towson University, University of Mount Union, University of Rochester, University of Southern California, and University of St. Thomas.
The $10,000 grants support a diverse array of initiatives across these institutions. Several grantees are facilitating research efforts to learn more about the religious diversity of their student populations. Some are developing religious accommodations on campus through dining options and academic policies. A number of teams are implementing strategic programs that deepen students’ interfaith learning. Many of these campuses are also increasing curricular offerings to prepare students in a variety of fields to effectively engage religious diversity.
As the grant year for these campuses winds down, implementation teams are faced with big questions about how to sustain the important work they’ve started. In a recent cohort call, participants shared important strategies with one another: look for key partners across the institution and in the broader community; work to institutionalize change by connecting this work to broader campus goals; hone the language for this work so that it speaks to a broader audience and a broader set of values.
The grant team at University of St. Thomas, a private Catholic university in Minnesota, is a great case study for these practices. In recent years, team members noticed abundant energy on campus around interfaith engagement. This was exciting but also presented a challenge: the need to coordinate this energy for strategic, long-term change in campus culture. To address this challenge, the team at University of St. Thomas is convening a diverse group of stakeholders to participate in the development of an Institutional Multifaith Strategic Plan. The group works to identify priorities and strategies to advance religious pluralism on campus. Convening these stakeholders has also prompted the grant team to articulate the importance of interfaith work at a Catholic institution. Hans Gustafson, grant team lead, shares, “This has been a productive challenge, as it compels us to develop resources that justify and contextualize this work, setting the stage for long-term, sustainable change. … [We have the opportunity to highlight] the legacy of interfaith engagement at St. Thomas and within the broader Catholic intellectual tradition and social teachings.”
At American River College, a massive community college in northern California, deploying these strategies looks a bit different. Team lead Bill Zangeneh-Lester is crafting learning pathways to make interfaith literacy both accessible and sustainable to a diverse student population. Bill is creating a set of courses for a new Associate of Arts (AA) degree in Interfaith Studies, ensuring each course is compliant with California’s credit transfer policies so that students can use these credits toward a bachelor’s degree later. He is also designing an interfaith literacy certificate program for students in workplace development programs, expanding the reach of this new curriculum. Bill’s work is a great example of how campuses can work strategically within existing academic infrastructure to increase student and faculty exposure to interfaith learning.
The work at University of St. Thomas and American River College are just two examples of how Inspiring Campus Change grantees are developing interfaith infrastructures, practices, and strategies on campus. Interfaith America is proud to partner with each of these institutions as they advance religious pluralism in their campus communities.
