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Courses, Curricula, and Tools

Curriculum

BRIDGE

Building Regular Interfaith Dialogue through Generous Engagement (BRIDGE)

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Use BRIDGE

Use BRIDGE

These modules are filled with resources to activate an awareness around worldview engagement and develop skills to help you foster interfaith cooperation. Each module is available to you and free for download. The content in these modules focuses on increasing one’s confidence to engage religious and worldview diversity through introducing foundational theories and concepts, guiding self-reflection, interrogating biases, and of course, practice.

We also offer one-on-one coaching with an Interfaith America staff member should you need support preparing to facilitate your workshop. Please email us to request a coach, and to share your experiences and feedback!

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BRIDGE Background

BRIDGE Background

We live in a time when people of different religious and non-religious backgrounds are interacting with increasing frequency. Over the past several years, leaders in higher education have recognized a call to engage with religious, spiritual, and secular identity (collectively understood as “worldview”) to prepare college graduates for the realities of global citizenship. However, despite this identified need, professionals and paraprofessionals often express a lack of confidence to engage this element of identity.

To help address this discomfort, IA assembled a committee of 12 experienced higher education professionals in 2016 to advise the overarching goals and outline of a training workshop experience for campus professional and paraprofessional staff. Over the course of the following year, IA designed, piloted, and refined a suite of curricular resources, including a set of seven workshop modules, a standard 30-minute introduction activity, a detailed facilitator’s guide, and the supporting materials for professionals to download and facilitate their own interfaith training on their campuses. This “train the trainer” approach aims to encourage educators to incorporate worldview engagement into broader conversations around diversity on their campuses.

 

The modules are designed for campus professional staff to be offered within professional development activities (training days, retreats, etc.) Some campus professionals have also found the materials useful for student leadership trainings, depending on the nature of the group and their readiness to talk about worldview. Modules focus on self-reflection, interrogation of biases around worldview, and activities to practice discussing religious and worldview identity from our own perspectives.

The modules are all between 2 and 5-page PDF files, with the option to choose which modules you would like to include in your workshop. After completing a standard introductory mini-module each module can be tailored for your specific group. Regardless of which module(s) you choose, please take time to review the facilitator’s guide, which provides information on the items to consider when preparing to facilitate these modules. The minimum time you will need to facilitate a workshop is 90 minutes. Please visit the library page to find more extensive descriptions for each module.

  • Over time, we hope that a critical mass of professionals who complete a BRIDGE workshop will demonstrate:
  • Authenticity and vulnerability in worldview engagement
  • The ability to build trust and rapport across lines of worldview difference
  • Understanding of the nuance of worldview engagement
  • Willingness to engage the experiences and perspectives of others in the face of deep disagreement

We offer one-on-one coaching with an IA staff member should you need support preparing to facilitate your workshop. Please be in touch with us to share your experiences and feedback!

BRIDGE Testimonials

  • 1

    Baylor University

    In coordination with the Multicultural Office on campus, The Religious Life Office at Baylor utilized the BRIDGE modules to design a religious diversity training for Student Affairs and co-curricular staff. The training, and particularly the Identity Gears module, enabled participants to share their worldviews and connect more deeply with their own identities. This coming year they intend to implement the training in other spaces on campus.

  • 2

    Utah Valley University

    The Office of the Dean of Students at Utah Valley University in partnership with the UVU Reflection Center and the UVU Foundations of Inclusion Program designed a series of workshops to introduce faculty, staff, and administrators to topics related to diversity and inclusion. The Interreligious, Interfaith, and Worldview track in this series draws its curriculum from the BRIDGE materials and is designed to increase awareness of the challenges and opportunities for interfaith engagement for both religious and non-religious faculty, staff, and students on campus. It also helps individuals explore how they can foster a culture of pluralism.

  • 3

    Queens University of Charlotte

    With an IA grant, Chaplain Joey Haynes hosted a dinner dialogue and training for educators and students from Queens University of Charlotte and other neighboring campuses. To aid in the dinner dialogue’s structure and facilitation, Chaplain Joey drew from BRIDGE’s exploring bias modules to drive engaging interfaith conversations.

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BRIDGE

Modules focus on self-reflection, interrogation of biases around worldview, and activities to practice discussing religious and worldview identity from our own perspectives.

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