"It changed the teaching situation here and changed what I feel I need to know in order to teach religion," she says.

Eck has been a director of the Pluralism Project since 1991. The project has involved undergraduates and graduate students to do research on religious communities in their own hometowns. For four years, they have compiled data such as the number of Buddhist temples, mosques and other places of worship in cities like Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh.

The first publication of the Pluralism Project is a CD-ROM titled "On Common Ground," which Eck says is an appropriate means of making the material accessible and useful to eighth graders and graduate students alike.

"But it's an awful thing to produce," she says. "It's like writing a 3,000 page book in little bits that people can look at in any order they want."

Recently, Eck has enlisted religion departments at other universities to assist in the project.

"It's not only interesting research about America, but also an important form of teaching...a new set of relationships that departments ought to have with religious groups in their own neighborhoods for pedagogical purposes," Eck says.

According to Eck, the Pluralism Project is a good example of the interdisciplinary nature of the study of religion.

"When you study religion, you have to study history, art, languages...whole civilizations," she says.