Residency Program

Sometimes the best classroom is a world quite unlike your own, and the best teachers are those who are quite unlike yourself.

Through Miami University’s Over-the-Rhine Residency Program, students from a variety of academic and life backgrounds immerse themselves as contributing parts of an urban community. The effect is transformational. Students challenge their lifelong social perceptions. They find new understanding of challenges and issues faced by urban communities. They gain new appreciation for those working for positive change in challenging environments. And they form lifelong bonds to one another, their Over-the-Rhine neighbors and the community itself.

The Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine

Located two blocks from Over-the-Rhine’s Washington Park, the award-winning Center for Community Engagement, launched in 2002, is the physical and programmatic home for Miami’s Over-the-Rhine Residency Program, including Design Build/The Atelier, the Urban Teaching Cohort and other place-based interdisciplinary practicums, including social work. Students reside in the neighborhood during semester-and summer-long experiences.

Urban Teaching Cohort

Put simply, teachers who understand the everyday lives and challenges of their students are better equipped to reach those students. Launched in 2008, the Miami University Urban Teaching Cohort (UTC) gives future teachers knowledge and skills that support their success—and, ultimately, their students’ success—in urban classrooms. It goes beyond textbooks to provide Miami students with a full understanding of the challenges and opportunities within urban schools and communities. In a sense, the community is integrated into the curriculum.

Design Build and The Atelier

Through their work in respecting history, assessing the present and imagining future possibilities, designers have the power to reshape neighborhoods, foster community and create legacies that make enduring statements about our society. Design Build and The Atelier—through a hands-on approach—have prepared dozens of skilled designers with a respect for community history, a deeper awareness of social issues and an ethical understanding of their responsibility to bring about change in the world around them.