The mission of the Economic and Policy Analysis Research Center (EPARC) is to contribute to policy discussions at the local, state, and national level through empirical research. To do so, EPARC focuses on conducting and disseminating policy relevant research along with training students and supporting faculty working on policy related topics. 

A part of EPARC’s mission is to give hands-on empirical training to students. Emma Gould, a former student working on the VSR project, described her experience in this way: “Working on VSR gave me insight into how economic concepts can be used in the real world to promote equity and create positive change. Additionally, learning how to write code to clean and analyze data gave me a marketable advantage coming out of school and has been something I use almost every day.”