The Interfaith Learning Leadership Certificate provides students with the opportunity to engage in interfaith dialogues and build leadership competencies through a series of workshops. Students explore diverse worldviews and social justice by examining worldviews, spiritualities and faith traditions in daily life, conversations to build supportive networks and communities, and how to deepen learning through problem-solving local justice issues. Learning outcomes include developing appreciative knowledge for different faiths, religions and spiritualities, helping students gain deeper insights on diversity and common ground across faiths, engaging in interfaith conversations, and learning strategies on how to navigate difficult conversations. Seventy-three students took part in this certificate, where they reported meeting friends, learning about other identities in an intersectional way and developing their ability to think and live in a religiously diverse world.
Through the SPA process, staff developed a rubric in further understanding the student experience of this initiative. This rubric has been helpful in students familiarizing themselves with the program’s expectations and supporting their learning. This has also helped to demonstrate how assessments can be integrated into the learning process rather than evaluation and facilitating a student-first mindset.
The rubric was used as a formative tool to better understand student needs and track student growth over time. The rubric focused on assessing the level at which students felt welcomed and engaged in the program (belonging), their ability to form deeper connections and relationships with their sense of spirituality and faith (self-discovery), their desire to engage with the content further (curiosity – further exploration) and their ability to incorporate their learning into their daily lives (leadership).