Higher Education

Bring Interfaith to Campus: Assignments for Students

Created by faculty who have participated in Interfaith America’s programming, these student assignments are available as models for educators.

Bring Interfaith to Campus

The following assignments for students are thoughtfully curated educational tools designed to deepen students’ understanding of religious diversity and foster meaningful interfaith engagement. Developed by faculty involved in Interfaith America’s programming, these assignments serve as models for educators aiming to integrate interfaith learning into their curricula.

From interviewing other community members in the B.R.E.W. Interview Assignment to exploring personal identity through the Spiritual Autobiography Projects, each activity encourages reflection, dialogue, and experiential learning. Assignments like the Interfaith Passport, Careful Conversation Fieldwork, and Interfaith Service Learning invite students to step beyond the classroom, engage with different traditions, and critically reflect on their experiences. Whether through site visits, role-playing debates such as the Park 51 Activity, or ethnographic research, these assignments will equip students with the tools to understand and navigate religious pluralism in real-world contexts.

Assignments for Students

Being Responsibly Engaged in the World (B.R.E.W.) Interview Assignment

This assignment, created by Jacqueline Bussie of Concordia College, asks students to interview religiously diverse neighbors as part of her “Faith in Dialogue: Interfaith Leadership” course.

Careful Conversation Fieldwork Assignment

This assignment encourages students to have a careful discussion with someone whose religious understandings and practices are different from their own and write a reflection on it afterwards.

Deliberative Discourse Classroom Activity

This instructor-led activity requires student reflection and introspection to show students how to become more self-reflexive and to explore their own intersectional identities.

Interfaith Hope Meditation / (In)Justice Watch Assignment

This assignment requires students to prepare a 5-10-minute segment about an inspirational interfaith event/engagement.

Interfaith Passport Assignment

This assignment helps students engage with interfaith themes other than their own with site visits, learning, and teaching activities included.

Interfaith Service Learning Assignment

This assignment, created by Hans Gustafson of the University of St. Thomas, gives students the opportunity to complete and reflect upon interfaith-focused service learning or volunteering.

Interfaith Site Visits and Self Analysis Paper

This assignment requires students to research a religious tradition, attend the tradition’s worship services, and then write a final research paper.

Park 51 Role Playing Activity

This activity focuses on the Ground Zero Mosque controversy to make moments of interfaith encounter real for students in the classroom.

Pluralism in the Real World: Project Assignment

In this assignment, students conduct interviews within a social network of their choice about the relevance or importance of religious diversity.

Religious Culture Assignment

This assignment guides a visit to a religious site and outlines a reflection paper for students to write after attending a worship service.

Religious Ethnography Project Assignment

This assignment invites students to engage in ethnographic study through interviews and religious site visits.

Spiritual Autobiography Assignment

This assignment, created by Rahuldeep Gill of California Lutheran University, encourages students to trace their own stories as a part of his “Introduction to Christianity” course.

Spiritual Autobiography Assignments and Projects

These assignments allow students to respond to course readings while crafting their own spiritual autobiographies.

Bring Interfaith to Campus: Assignments for Students