In Fall 2006 Miami University’s Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine (CCE) inaugurated the Over-the-Rhine Residency Program in collaboration with leaders and organizations of Over-the-Rhine. A neighborhood in transition, Over-the-Rhine today is marked by the extremes of gentrification and homelessness. Now in its eighth iteration, the program has students integrate a full course load of 15 credit hours with a full-time living and working immersion experience in the “school of social life.”

In the late 1990s students requesting more substantial community engagement led to the institutionalization of the CCE (2002) and the Residency Program (2006). The Residency Program brings faculty and students from all disciplines to work collaboratively with neighborhood organizations to effect democratic, equitable development strategies for people on low incomes, workers, people of color, and families. The Residency Program engages with the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement and other groups struggling for human rights and social justice. This distinguishes us from programs based upon charity and noblesse oblige. Unlike those models, by diving deep into analyses that reveal the systemic structures producing inequality and symmetrical relations of power, we challenge students’ sense of why charity is needed in the first place.