During the 1986-87 academic year, selected departments of the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University entered into a cooperative agreement to explore interdepartmental linkages for preparing graduate students and psychiatry residents to work more effectively with individuals with serious mental disabilities and their families. The planning process for the group, which was originally called the Multidisciplinary Program Consortium, led to the development of a multidisciplinary, graduate-level, training program. The program emphasized a collaborative approach to working with mental health consumers in which no single approach used by any of the constituent disciplines was endorsed to the exclusion of the others. From the outset, the group recognized that the multidisciplinary nature of the project would both provide a perspective on the mental health system which would not be possible within a single discipline and make possible a training program that would uniquely serve the needs of future mental health professionals. The program became operational the following academic year with a program grant from Ohio Department of Mental Health and accepted its first class of graduate students and residents from the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, social work, and nursing. Since that time, the faculty serving as the programâs Steering Committee have developed numerous affiliations with community mental health providers and other clinical placement settings,published numerous articles in professional journals, made presentations at professional meetings and conventions, and won several national awards of recognition for its work. The MPC has been funded continuously since 1987 by a series of generous grants from the Ohio Department of Mental Health. Research grants and program funding have been secured by MPC faculty well in excess of four million dollars, and the graduates of the MPC number in excess of 300. The MPC added a faculty member and students from the UC College of Law and the Social Service Technology Program in 1998, and the Center moved into new offices at the Summit Behavioral Healthcare in 1999.