1. Critical Conversations: Addressing Challenges in Interfaith Assessment
JT Snipes & Becca Hartman-Pickerill
#IFYC #NASPA17
50 min

2. Introductions JT Snipes Becca Hartman-Pickerill
@jsnipes3 @beccahartman
Campus Assessment Campus Stewardship

3. Goals Engage with the social science behind IFYC’s methodology
Understand the emerging trends of interfaith work on campus
Articulate the challenges of expanding interfaith work on college and university campuses
Apply best practices in interfaith assessment to your campus
JT: Provide an overview of the program, invite audience members to share what they hope to learn in the session and why they attended
Consent agenda

4. Terms and Conditions
Interfaith cooperation: people who orient around religion differently working together on shared values
Religious pluralism: engaged worldview diversity
IFYC’s vision: a society where interfaith cooperation is a social norm
Respect for religious/worldview identity.
Mutually inspiring relationships across difference.
A commitment to the common good.
Becca: define IFYC mission, methodology,

5. The Interfaith Triangle 1
Positive Behaviors/
Relationships
Appreciative Knowledge
The Interfaith Triangle 1
Spend enough time here to explain Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s work
Positive Attitudes
1 Patel, E. (2012). Sacred ground: Pluralism, prejudice, and the promise of America. Boston: Beacon Press. 5

6. IDEALS Highlights
JT reports some findings, offers report as hand-out

7. Leadership Practices for Interfaith Excellence in Higher Education
Identity & Mission
Campus-Wide Strategy
Public Identity
Respect and Accommodate Identity
Academic Priority
Staff & Faculty Capacity
Student Leadership
Campus-Community Partnerships
Assessment
JT hands out 9 LP article, Becca introduces the resource and notes that we will reference it throughout the session
THIS IS A KIND OF CAMPUS-WIDE ASSESSMENT

8. Challenges to Interfaith Work
Respecting and accommodating religious and secular identities at the margins
Incorporating religious/worldview identity into existing diversity priorities (history of privatizing religion, silos)
Framing worldview diversity engagement as a civic value
Building new, sustainable community partnerships
Entrenched campus/(inter)national patterns of how worldview identity is engaged

9. Assessment Case Studies
Respect & Accommodation: Dartmouth University
Private secular, New England, 6K students
Staff/Faculty Capacity: University of North Florida
Public, large, Southeast, 16K students
Academic + Community Partnership: North Park University
Private religious, Midwest, 2.5K students
Challenge: Interfaith University
Private secular, Midwest, 8K students
Dartmouth (JT) – campus climate
UNF (Becca) – Staff-faculty capacity
North Park University (Becca) – optional – academic & community partnership
Northwestern University (Becca) - challenges
Could offer UCLA to have a west coast school
J.T.
Our first case comes from Dartmouth University. As you can see from the slide Dartmouth is a private nonsectarian institution located in the New England area with around six thousand students. Before I explain the accomodations they provided I want to first give a little background information. Dartmouth is an institution that has a strong chaplaincy. And this summer Rabbi Daveen Litwin stepped in to continue the good work that Nancy Vogele began. Dartmouth’s structure is primed for expansion of interfaith programming and cooperation on campus. Structurally they have a multifaith advisor and a strong program known as multifaith conversations. The big question they had was how effective is their programming. Enter IDEALS – As a participant in IDEALS Rabbi Litwin was able to notice emerging interfaith trends on her campus. She saw that students had low appreciative attitudes toward evangelical students. This was not surprising because the campus has a significant population of secularly oriented students. The finding prompted her to take two actions. The first was have a student panel of directors review, interpret, and analyze the raw data. The result was leveraging the popular multifaith program to address evangelicalism. The second action was to approach fellow administrators with the data, and invited them to help collaborate to make the campus more welcoming for evangelical students. The plan is not without challenges, but Rabbi Litwin is able to generate positive action toward greater campus interfaith cooperation and pluralism.

10. Small Group Conversation
Break into groups of 4 and discuss any of the following questions. Assign a notetaker and speaker to report back to the larger group:
Which of the scenarios resonated most with you?
How does it relate to your campus context?
What from your training speaks to these challenges and opportunities?
What training do you need to overcome these challenges?
Small group discussions where each participant can draw out where resistance to assessment and/or interfaith work sits on campus
Discuss strategies for overcoming these barriers in small groups; synthesize in large groups
Share some assessment resource printouts

11. Resources E-mail Becca@ifyc.org to complete the Campus
Interfaith Inventory
& IDEAS
Expanding Buy-in for Interfaith ( )
Curriculum & Resources Introduction ( )
Planning for Next Year ( )

12. Spring 2018 Administration
Do you have the pulse on interfaith engagement for your campus?
Spring 2018 Administration
VIEWS measures students’:
Perceptions of religious/ worldview climate
Attitudes toward others
Engagement with diverse others
Pluralism orientation
Early-bird Registration Deadline: Friday, September 29th
Final Registration Deadline: Friday November 3rd
For more information visit
Questions? us at
How do your students experience worldview diversity?