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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Students apply to the Urban Cohort spring semester of their freshman year.
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.
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 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. “
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.