Religious Diversity & Bridgebuilding
Bridging the Gap equips students and educators with the skills and knowledge to better engage across deep divides in our polarized society.
Higher Education
A curriculum for educators and facilitators focused on the bridgebuilding practices and skills that help people engage across deep divides.
We envision a culture where the heroes are the bridge builders. Towards that goal, the program is designed to reduce the polarization in our country by giving students, faculty, and administrators the skills they need to find common ground across deep divides while solving problems on their campuses and in their communities.
Bridging the Gap teaches students and campus professionals how to truly listen, understand, be heard, and seek common ground to positively impact their communities without comprising deeply held values. Our approach involves skill-building, encounters, and direct application. The skills of listening, story-telling, and engaging tension constructively are at the heart of the BTG experience. Students will learn and then practice these skills by directly engaging with people on or off their campus who have different views, values, and/or experiences. Finally, in the application part of the BTG model, different groups practice these solution-oriented skills together and hear from voices of a broad range of stakeholders on a chosen policy topic. We focus on equipping educators and students with these abilities and encouraging them to effectively promote these skills more broadly on their campus through curricular and co-curricular projects, courses, and initiatives. Campuses have done this in a number of ways. Colleges and universities with different ideological or mission backgrounds have paired together in the past to run semester-long programs. Other campuses have run a BTG semester course solely within their own institution. Many campuses are utilizing aspects of BTG within student leadership trainings, for paraprofessional students, and with staff and administrators. We encourage any campus to think creatively about how best to utilize bridge-building skills within their unique context.
Longtime organizer and activist Simon Greer founded Bridging the Gap in 2020 by bringing together a class of students from Spring Arbor University, a Christian institution in Michigan, and Oberlin College, a school associated with progressive values in Ohio. Facilitated by Greer, the students from both campuses came together to learn about each other and how to work across increasingly common political and social divides on their campuses. Since this initial pairing, the program has grown to engage over 50 campuses and a variety of program implementation models.
BTG’s approach is leading to direct impact on students and campuses across the country. As one student who participated in BTG said, “I have learned…that it is possible to connect with people who have different views and ideologies than I do. That people who are different from me care about me, and I care deeply about them.” Diverse institutions including Christian universities, HBCUs, private secular universities, and public universities have reported the meaningful impact of BTG’s work on their campus and the development of storytelling abilities and empathy among their students. As campuses, higher education leaders, and civic institutions attempt to address issues of division and polarization, Bridging the Gap has shown the impact it can have on the most pressing issues facing campuses today.
The following films offer a variety of insights and perspectives into the hard and important work of bridgebuilding. “Listening is a Superpower” is an instructional video that features BTG founder Simon Greer leading viewers through the development of a listening skillset. Other videos focus on telling the stories of the work. Whether you use these films in a class, with a student group, or simply to gain insight into BTG’s programming, we hope they serve as a catalyst for your own bridgebuilding work on your campus and in your community.
Many thanks to the Nantucket Project for producing these films.
Check out our multipart curriculum focusing on bridgebuilding skills and applications. It’s designed for educators to use with students in classrooms and groups across campus. Bringing together the best practices of Bridging the Gap, this curriculum will help you teach the skills and abilities needed to engage across deep divides.
Since its beginning, BTG has been defined by our skills-based approach. From those on very progressive campuses to very conservative campuses, BTG has changed students’ lives and mindsets. Educators have adopted this model not only because of its focus on skills, but because their students have been successful in building strong relationships across difference and crossing divides to address real world problems.
Engagement across difference has helped us clarify and strengthen who we are as Christians, and illuminated stories we may not have understood about "the other" along the way, so we are committed to bridge-building and the opportunity for it to take root even more deeply at SAU.
BTG is resonating with staff and students at Bentley who want to see a more connected community with a sense of belonging that bridges typical societal divides.
I have loved seeing each of our students grow this semester through building genuine and deep relationships as they tackled challenging topics in our community— they have given a living example of what it means to Bridge the Gap.
INSIDE HIGHER ED
Liberal Education
Please contact us with any questions about Bridging the Gap.
Tina Grace
Program Coordinator
Interfaith America
Carr Harkrader
Program Consultant
Interfaith America
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