Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities Network (EPIC-N) is a conference and workshop for university representatives, local government officials, and organizational partners interested in adopting, adapting, and/or enhancing the EPIC Model for their institutions and communities.

There are two primary outcomes attendees receive from attending:

1. Inspiration and support to launch new programs; and
2. Expertise shared by other EPIC programs about ways continuously improve.

About the EPIC model

Cities and communities face serious challenges related to social equity, environmental sustainability, fiscal health, livability and more.  While these are real challenges, lack of knowledge of how to address them is often not the barrier for moving forward, but putting knowledge into practice is.  Local governments often lack the time, capacity, knowledge, and political space to do things in new ways.  Universities, on the other hand, especially via existing curricula and classrooms, have an enormous amount of time, capacity, access to new knowledge, and an inherent ability to insert new ideas into the public discourse in politically safe ways

Matching local governments (cities, counties, transit districts, tribes, etc.) and universities to take advantage of one another’s needs and capacities, and doing so at a bigger scale than more typical one-off university-community projects, is the EPIC innovation that actually helps move the needle on pressing community issues while also training the next generation workforce and professionals.  And because the EPIC approach works within the existing administrative structures of both universities and local governments, the model is highly replicable and adaptable.