By Antonia Lopez
Staff Writer
After COVID, Jon Burch, associate professor of management, saw a shift in the way people engaged in conversation regarding controversial topics.
“Something happened during Covid. The unwillingness to discuss issues got even more intensified than before,” said Burch.
That shift was one of the motivating factors that encouraged Burch to make changes in his classroom. The first step to change happened after Burch and Jonathan Bartling, vice president of student affairs and accreditation, attended a free conference led by Interfaith America.
Interfaith America is an organization set to inspire, equip and connect leaders and institutions to unlock the potential of America’s religious diversity, according to their website. The conference focused on training professionals on the “Bridge the Gap” curriculum.
“I teach leadership classes, and I am always interested in how we can lead better, impact better and have dialogue,” said Burch.
Originally, Burch was not sure what the conference was going to be about and didn’t realize how powerful the conference would be until he attended.
“One of the first things the speaker said was that over 70% of professors and students in college campuses duck and hide,” said Burch. “They won’t address any issue at all that has any potential to get you canceled or get you a dirty look.”
During the conference, Bridge the Gap had six modules teaching techniques on how to have dialogue in a multicultural environment, said Burch.
“They took us through [the techniques] at the conference,” said Burch. “I was blown away at how helpful those skills are.”
The skills taught at the conference were simple, and Burch thought it would be a good idea to implement them in the classroom, and he applied for a grant to teach a class using those skills. He received the grant from Interfaith America and began to implement the curriculum in one of his leadership courses, called “Case Studies and Leadership.”
Although Burch had taught the class before, he found it important to implement these skills as a way to enhance conversation. He said he has seen a drastic change in the conversations his students have in the classroom from the beginning of the semester.
At first, Burch’s students did not want to talk about the prompts or people he presented as case studies in class.
“The first three weeks of class, we worked on the skills,” said Burch. “If you walk into that class now, everybody was a part of the discussion.”
Burch taught his students the skills in an applicable way, separating the skills into different rounds. Students were given prompts and had to take turns listening to other students’ opinions with no facial expression or non-verbals, then with only nonverbals, and then only repeating what was being said by the other person and asking follow-up questions.
“The first part of the whole ordeal is active listening,” said Burch. “The end goal is [for the people participating] that no matter what, we’re going to be friends after it’s over.”
Bartling planned for an Interfaith America representative to attend the professional development meeting on April 16, along with a panel of Trevecca students from Burch’s class as testimonials.
Bartling has hopes that student leaders and more faculty will be able to get trained on the curriculum and be able to use it in conversations inside the classroom, he said.
“My hope is that student development and student leadership will eventually get into [Bridge the Gap] and we can get a campus wide grant to be able to do this,” said Bartling. “We’re just in the beginning stages of it.”
