CALIFORNIA – Making history in American campuses, a national organization of university religious leaders elected its first Muslim president last week in a move that could influence college diversity for years.

“When we were being sworn into our new positions, it felt like a civil rights moment,” elected Imam Adeel Zeb, who serves as the Muslim chaplain at the Claremont University Consortium in Southern California, told The Huffington Post.

The surprise move was announced by the National Association of College and University Chaplains, making Zeb the first non-Christian leader for the organization.

Zeb will assume the one-year, volunteer position at NACUC this summer.

For Zeb, the new position, deemed a milestone for himself, is also an inspiration to other non-Christian religious leaders to enter the field of college chaplaincy.

Zeb said he knew of roughly 13 full-time Muslim chaplains serving at colleges in the US and Canada.

Many of them are paid by outside nonprofits and mosques, he said, and none hold their campus’ top spiritual leadership position.

But campus religious leadership is going through a transition. This academic year, Dartmouth College appointed Rabbi Daveen Litwin to its top chaplaincy position.

Another rabbi, David Leipziger Teva, became the founding director of Wesleyan University’s office of religious and spiritual life in 2007. The following year, the University of Southern California hired Varun Soni, a Hindu lawyer and scholar, to head its office of religious life.

The decision was praised by Rabbi Dena Bodian, current NACUC president.

“It’s important to remember that many of our universities started affiliated to a seminary or with some denomination, all Christian,” Rabbi Bodian told HuffPost.

But Bodian added that having non-Christian voices both in campus chaplaincy and in national associations that represent the field “helps to reframe the conversation about campus religious life in really important ways.”

Soni shared a similar opinion.

“Adeel is also a trailblazer,” Soni said.

“I consider him to be a pioneer, and his appointment is significant. He will inspire other Muslim leaders to think about university chaplaincy.”

Zeb said hopes universities will start to pay attention, too.

“I do feel that in the future people will start looking at the candidate not because of their faith but because of what impact they can have as ethical leaders for their college campus.”