The Urban Leaders organization is brand new to Miami University this year, but it already has big plans for the future.
Forming this September, the Urban Leaders created the goal to raise awareness of urban issues on campus and to build a community for people interested in social justice in urban areas. The organization has already invited urban Cincinnati community members to campus for an event Friday called Voices of Homelessness. Also, the Urban Leaders are collaborating with Guiding 100, the NAACP and Adopt-A-School to bring Steve Perry, a speaker on educational reform, to campus at a date to be announced during the spring semester.
Haliee Gibbons, a 2008 Miami graduate and current advisor to the program, originally thought up the idea for Urban Leaders while working as a graduate assistant for the Urban Teaching Cohort. The Urban Teaching Cohort has worked with high needs schools in the Cincinnati area for the past two years.
According to Tammy Schwartz, founder of the cohort, "[The Urban Teaching Cohort is] a community based approach to education in urban areas."
Their goal is to give future teachers the knowledge and skills necessary to help urban students succeed.
Mary Milchen, a junior middle childhood education major and a member of the Urban Leaders said she agrees it is important to have more than education majors involved with Urban Leaders.
"The poverty experienced by the students covers more than just education issues," Milchen said. Gibbons founded the Urban Leaders organization with an understanding of the urban issues surrounding the schools supported by the Urban Teaching Cohort. She realized a real change required a more holistic approach, which education majors could not do alone.
Gibbons also said she believes it is a great opportunity for people with similar passions to unite.
"At Miami, we are so focused on our majors that we forget there are other people who share our passions but are addressing the issues in a different way," Gibbons said.
The Urban Leaders organization hopes to create global leaders in society to change the current system of poverty.
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