At the 2025 Interfaith Leadership Summit, IA network members joined StoryCorps One Small Step for 30-minute, one-on-one conversations across lines of difference. These kinds of conversations happen every day among students, co-workers, and family members in America, and the Summit is a space where participants can learn to seek them out with the purpose of respecting diverse identities, fostering meaningful relationships, and cooperating for the common good.

Listen to the full conversation to hear campus administrators Dr. Kishia James and Dr. Ashante Connor discuss their backgrounds and faith journeys, the unique challenges their campus communities face, and how their experiences as undergraduates shaped their approaches to student support.

In many ways, college looks different today than when Dr. Kishia James and Dr. Ashante Connor were students.

During an August 2025 conversation at the Interfaith Leadership Summit, the two administrators — who met who met at the Summit’s Bridging the Gap training track — both reflected on how campus resources and support programming have evolved since their undergraduate years.

“I feel like we were the ‘figure it out’ generation,” said Dr. Connor, who was a first-generation college student and now serves as the Associate Vice President for Inclusive Excellence at Montclair State University.

Those experiences continue to shape her work at Montclair, a large public research university in New Jersey, where she trains faculty and staff to foster one-on-one relationships with students that help them move toward mutual understanding.

Interfaith cooperation has been especially important as the university has navigated tensions among Jewish, Palestinian, and Arab American students related to conflict in Gaza. Dr. Connor came to the Summit to deepen and share bridgebuilding skills that can help “create an environment where people can feel seen, heard, respected, and there could be understanding from both sides.”

For Dr. James, who is the Vice President for Student Affairs at Jarvis Christian University, a Historically Black University (HBCU) in Hawkins, TX, bridgebuilding begins with creating space for students to share their experiences.

One example was a collaborative panel with Texas Christian University, where Jarvis leaders discussed “their lived experiences on college campuses as it relates to racism and any other ‘isms’ that they’re dealing with,” Dr. James said.

She was particularly moved by international students from Africa who described feeling isolated because of how they were treated on campus.

“Just allowing them to have space to have those conversations amongst one another, that that made a huge impact on our campus.”

“Just allowing them to have space to have those conversations amongst one another, that that made a huge impact on our campus,” she reflected.

The two leaders also discussed their own faith backgrounds. Dr. James described how deepening her Christian faith in her 20s grounds her work and efforts to support students on their own spiritual journeys.

“Even though they’re at a Christian university,” she said, “we do make certain that we offer the spiritual development and offer them opportunities to worship whoever they may worship.”

Dr. Connor reflected on the complexity of growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness and how her spirituality and Christianity inform her leadership today.

“I do follow many of the foundational principles of Christianity, but for me it’s connection to people, and that I have a restorative mindset, and that leads to me to my work,” she said. “It’s important for me to recognize the humanness in all of us.”

Both leaders see their work of bridgebuilding as a calling and emphasize the importance of approaching relationships with openness — leading with grace rather than judgment.

“This work is… definitely needed in the world that we live in right now.”

“This work is very, very much needed within not only college spaces,” said Dr. James. “It’s definitely needed in the world that we live in right now.”

Senior institutional leaders can register for the Evolving the Institutional Landscape Summit track, which will equip leaders to make the case for sustained pluralism building strategies at an institutional level.

Rachel Crowe

Rachel Crowe, Staff Writer for IA Today, tells compelling stories about interfaith cooperation across diverse communities. She is a graduate of Gettysburg College where she earned a BA in English with a Writing Concentration and a German Studies minor.