Four Pillars for Supporting Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Student Identities

• In Event: Division J Vice Presidential Session: Revising CAS's (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education) Campus Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Programs (CRSSP) Standard for the Next Decade

Abstract

In an unpublished national research study, “Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Identities in Higher Education,” which evaluated how universities addressed issues of religious diversity on campus, interviews with university professionals, students, and community members revealed that the institutions that were successfully engaging in religious, secular, and spiritual identity work were changing their policies and practices at the administrative level in order to support these worldviews. Institutions at which students and members of the campus community generally articulated a sense of belonging and could pinpoint specific policies and practices to support this belonging were deemed successful at addressing religious, secular, and spiritual identity. These institutions exhibited patterns of policy and practice that coalesced around four emerging themes. These “Four Pillars of Policy and Practice” combined to create institutional climates that were markedly different in comparison to other institutions.

Authors

• J. Cody Nielsen, Western Michigan University

• Jenny L. Small, Convergence on Campus