Our Story

Our Mission

To enhance institutional climates for religious, secular, and spiritual identities through research, policy, and practice.

Convergence empowers professionals to move toward a future of diversity work that removes stigmas, opens communication, and fully incorporates religious, secular, and spiritual identities into the broader life of institutions. We focus on professionalizing this field with professionals and supporting institution-wide conversations and policy shifts around religious, secular, and spiritual identities.

From Moments to Movements

Higher education across North America is the hinge point through which the construction and reconstruction of culture takes place. The individuals present on our campuses will, for the next several decades, build the narrative that inspires the world to rethink how we interact with one another. Higher education is thus building the global society, and in so doing must adequately prepare students to be well-rounded and compassionate in all areas of diversity and inclusion.

One of the areas that is critical to global citizenship is the recognition of people’s religious, secular, and spiritual identities. Perhaps the last broad stroke of co-curricular education to be fully realized, religious, secular, and spiritual diversity has been largely overlooked and under-supported for much of higher education’s history (Small, 2015). This is due in large part to misunderstandings of the laws around the relationship between religion and government (Goodman, Wilson, & Nicolazzo, 2015). Though there are certain situations in which public institutions must approach religious matters using caution, higher education also lacks a set of clear, concrete solutions for professionals seeking to incorporate or learn more about students’ religious, secular, and spiritual development.

Complicating these challenges is an assumption by some people that religious, secular, and spiritual identity has no place in the work of higher education and should be relegated to off-campus entities. The relegation of these identities to the margins of campuses or beyond the campus now threatens the diversity and inclusion efforts of the academy as it seeks to support a global citizenship narrative. But an opportunity exists to reframe the conversation, helping higher education professionals to see these religious, secular, and spiritual identities as vessels of the values, morals, and character development efforts our students seek to understand as part of their growing transformation during college.

All of this is not to say that Convergence is starting the work around religious, secular, and spiritual identities from scratch. Much has changed since 1998, when a historic conference entitled Education as Transformation took place at Wellesley College with more than 800 students, student life professionals, faculty, campus ministers, chaplains, and presidents and other administrators who found common ground and began to forge forward in this work (Kazanjian & Laurence, 2000). Since this conference, over 1,200 journal articles have been written highlighting the value of religious, secular, and spiritual diversity and its inclusion on college campuses (Stewart, 2015). Study after study, including UCLA’s groundbreaking Spirituality in Higher Education study (Astin, Astin, & Lindholm, 2011), indicate that successful campus diversity and inclusion programs should incorporate religious, secular, and spiritual identities. Yet while much progress has been made in the realms of research and practice, many campuses across the country lag behind.

In the spring of 2013, J. Cody Nielsen (eventual Convergence founder and Executive Director) began what would become an international research study outlining how public and private American and Canadian higher education institutions were addressing the concerns of religious, secular, and spiritual students on campus. In addition to discovering the significant work already taking place, Nielsen’s site visits at 25 institutions across North America also revealed much work remaining to be done. Despite significant student-focused movements on college and university campuses, there exists a significant gap between these movements and how institutions are changing their administrative policies and practices. For instance, a campus may have a well-established interfaith group but have yet to implement significant practical changes such as kosher and halal food options or meditation and prayer spaces. In essence, the creation of student movements has not translated into a transformation of higher education institutions themselves.

The focus of Convergence is in addressing this gap. Working in tandem and in open dialogue with others committed to interfaith work, Convergence will serve as a resource to higher education at large to alter policies, practices, and campus infrastructures to encourage religious, secular, and spiritual growth and inclusion. We will utilize professionals as our catalysts for change on campuses, through equipping them with resources, skills, and new support networks. Through a combination of trainings, consultations, and coalition building, Convergence will bring campus leaders together to create both immediate and long-term changes which will affect all students. These policy and practice changes will be created organically at each campus utilizing previous best practices as well as through well-constructed assessment of individual campus climates. All changes will respond to the unique needs of specific campuses while also manifesting environments which alter perceptions, promote inclusion, and ultimately build environments that develop students as those well-rounded and compassionate citizens the global community so urgently needs.

References

Astin, A. W., Astin, H. S., & Lindholm, J. A. (2011). Cultivating the spirit: How college can enhance students’ inner lives. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Goodman, K. M., Wilson, K., & Nicolazzo, Z. (2015). Campus practice in support of spirituality, faith, religion, and life purpose: What has been accomplished and where do we go next? In J. L. Small (Ed.), Making meaning: Embracing spirituality, faith, religion, and life purpose in student affairs (pp. 118-140). Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Kazanjian, V. H., & Laurence, P. L. (Eds.). (2000). Education as transformation: Religious pluralism, spirituality and a new vision for higher education in America. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Small, J. L. (Ed.). (2015). Making meaning: Embracing spirituality, faith, religion, and life purpose in student affairs. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Stewart, D. L. (2015). The role of professional associations in advancing spirituality, faith, religion, and life purpose in student affairs. In J. L. Small (Ed.), Making meaning: Embracing spirituality, faith, religion, and life purpose in student affairs (pp. 82-96). Sterling, VA: Stylus.