The Eppley Center was thrilled to be invited to join the team of the IU Center for Rural Engagement in the latest episode of Our Indiana: Stories from Rural Hoosiers. In the latest episode, “Connecting Southern Indiana Through the Monon South Trail,” Dr. Kristy Anderson and Layne Elliott, along with Jeff Quyle of Radius Indiana, were invited to describe their work on projects in support of the Monon South Trail. During the conversation, our team discusses Eppley’s pivotal role in the project: development of four park system master plans and completion of a comprehensive economic impact projection to forecast how the trail will revitalize local economies. In the episode, Anderson describes the Eppley Center’s driving motivation behind the Monon South Trail projects and all collaborative efforts we support:
“I think one of the things that we truly try to ground ourselves at the Eppley Center is that everything that we do is data-driven…from the origination of a project to how we go about it, to implementing it. [In this project] we focused on looking at best practices, looking at comparative case studies, looking at the literature of comparable trails.
We get a lot of fulfillment out of serving our communities here in Indiana. We're Indiana University. We take a lot of pride in the Eppley Center, being home at IU, and so we love serving our community in a way that brings the research and the resources of Indiana University to our local communities here across the Monon South Trail, in Bloomington, Indianapolis, all over the state.”