Experiential
Exposure to urban perspectives via textbook and lectures provides a limited lens. The Urban Cohort emphasizes in-person interactions with our community partners in real time.
Urban Cohort Program
Do you want to work for change and equity? Join us to work alongside urban communities as you utilize your discipline for change. Learn what it means to be a community-grounded professional.
The Urban Cohort is a place- and community-based approach to interdisciplinary learning for undergraduate students rooted in social justice. Academic coursework combines immersive experiences in a community with residents of working-class, historically marginalized urban neighborhoods.
Throughout your time in the program, you will be challenged to critically analyze the systemic nature of urban social issues while learning from the lived experience and knowledge of youth and community residents. Together, we will navigate power, privilege, and the structural realities of racism, classism, and sexism.
By its nature, our program draws students with a strong social conscience and compassion who want the skills to meaningfully contribute to the collective, democratic efforts that make our systems and society more just as they think through these from the lenses of their disciplines of study.
The Urban Cohort is:
Collaborative Engagement
The Urban Cohort collaborates with community-based agencies and schools as well as Miami’s Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine and the Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry (TCE)’s TEACh Cincinnati program.
Supportive of Student Needs
Miami students often come from middle-class backgrounds. They are bright, socially conscious, and eager to make a difference, but many lack experience and confidence. So Miami’s program provides opportunities such as tutoring in urban schools and urban immersions (students spend a weekend in an inner city neighborhood working with community leaders on volunteer projects before they begin student teaching. Once students begin student teaching an interdisciplinary team of community, university, and school-based individuals provides mentoring.
Community-Based
Teaching is a situated practice, and the goal is to produce a new kind of teacher who is both teacher scholar and urban scholar. Students work and live in neighborhoods such as Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine area. They student teach in schools such as Cincinnati’s Rothenberg Elementary or Chicago’s Michele Clark High School. And community members are not just guest speakers, but co-collaborators.
Program Timeline
Year One
- Weekend Urban Immersion (see details below)
- Socio-Cultural Studies in Education-U
- 25 hours of community engagement in community-based agencies
- Critically reading/participating in “texts”
Year Two
- Urban Cohort Seminars
- Assigned public school student mentor
- Urban field placements
Year Three
- Urban Cohort Seminars
- Assigned Community Mentor
- Cincinnati Summer Immersion (see details below)
Year Four
- Urban Cohort Seminars
- Assigned Teacher Mentor
- Urban Ed Senior Capstone
- Residential Student Teaching Option (see details below)
Enhance Your Academic Experience
Urban Cohort students have a unique opportunity to earn a Fostering Just Communities Certificate.
Immersion Activities
Friday:
- Community Journey
- Venice on Vine
- Coalition for the Homeless
- Reflections
Saturday:
- Community Engagement
- Poverty Simulation
- Reflections
Application Process and Timeline
Students apply to the Urban Cohort in the spring semester of their freshman year.
- Information Session (April 10, 2025, 5-6 p.m. in McGuffey Hall 129 - The Nook)
- Complete an online application (due April 16, 2025).
- Submit the names of the two people who could serve as references for you (due April 11, 2025). Please send to: utc@MiamiOH.edu with the subject line "Urban Cohort references"
- In-person interview with a team of faculty, our urban cohort partners, and alumni (April 26, 2025)
- Notification of acceptance (April 28, 2025)
- Orientation (May 2, 2025, 5-6 p.m. in McGuffey Hall 129 - The Nook
- Participation in Urban Cohort Spring Retreat (Saturday, May 3, 2025, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m. in Cincinnati, transportation is provided)
Student Experiences
Students Leading Change
Urban Teaching Cohort Asthma Team
Recognition
Miami receives highest Presidential Award for Community Service in Early Childhood Education
Miami University was one of only five recipients out of 641 eligible schools in the nation to receive the Presidential Award in the 2012 President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.
Miami's honor recognizes service programs in the area of early childhood education.
The award is the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement. It is given by the U. S. Department of Education and the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a federal agency.
The Urban Cohort was one of the four major programs that contributed to Miami's national recognition
Other programs named include the Talawanda-Miami Partnership, Butler County Success, and Miami Connections.
Honorees were recognized on March 12, 2012 at a special conference of the American Council on Education held in Los Angeles, Calif., for service in the July 2010-June 2011 academic year. Miami estimates that 12,920 Miami students performed 387,600 hours of service in many areas in those 12 months.
“Notable programs include the Urban Cohort Program, with field experiences in social service agencies, churches, community-based organizations, and government agencies. “
Reframe Podcast
Urban Cohort Inspires Radical Empathy and Social Change
Exploring the inner workings of the Urban Cohort, an action-oriented program that exposes college students to urban perspectives through high-need schools and community organizations. Here, experiential learning is grounded in community life in very real ways.
For More Information
Contact Director Tammy Schwartz at 513-529-0434.
Contact Us
Department of Teaching, Curriculum, and Educational Inquiry
McGuffey Hall 401
Oxford, OH 45056
