Laurie Patton, president of Middlebury College(VT), and Eboo Patel, founder and president of IFYC, led the seminar. The week opened with a welcoming dinner hosted by IFYC and small-group work on interfaith understanding case studies. Seminar discussions and small group work during the week allowed participants to explore their own case studies and the substantial theoretical questions involved in teaching interfaith understanding and the practical work of translating these ideas into courses. Discussions also examined the interfaith frameworks articulated in Patel’s new book, Interfaith Leadership: A Primer (2016), and explored potential syllabus content. Participants toured DePaul’s interfaith spaces and spaces set aside for both Muslim and Jewish students to pray and organize their respective communities; they also visited Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network to consider the challenges and opportunities of site visits as a way of teaching interfaith understanding.

 

Participants praised the collegiality, small seminar setting, and open discussions with new colleagues that already have led to plans for future collaboration. Dan Mathewson, associate professor of religion at Wofford College (SC), noted, “I enjoyed the combination of intellectual rigor and nuts-and-bolts practicality of the seminar. The case studies, in particular, were an incredibly useful way to unpack the challenges and opportunities of interfaith work. I also treasured the informal conversations I had with my fellow seminar participants outside of the formal seminar setting.”

 

Coming out of this seminar, as well as the previous four, CIC and IFYC have been working with past participants to develop an online Faculty Resource Library that will allow other faculty members to access syllabi, teaching tools, sample activities, and other resources for teaching interfaith understanding. CIC and IFYC launched the recently completed curated library in September. Many of the resources were created by faculty members as direct results of their participation in the seminars; others are resources these scholars have used for years in their teaching. All resources can be found online.

 

Kristi Del Vecchio, IFYC’s academic initiatives manager, summarized the week by saying, “Participants expressed enthusiasm about the different opportunities for engagement throughout the seminar. They reported feeling intellectually enriched by the site visits, syllabus workshops, and case study discussions, yet they also had pragmatic next-steps to act upon as they return back to campus.”

 

The 2017 Teaching Interfaith Understanding seminar will take place June 18–22, again at DePaul University in Chicago.