History
Education • Parish • Service (EPS) was founded in 1978 by Sister Joan Bland, Ph.D., a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, who discovered a hunger among lay Catholics to learn more about their faith, particularly with the closing of the Second Vatican Council.
With advice and support of Archdiocese of Washington pastors, Sister Joan launched the program with foundation funding at Trinity College – now Trinity (Washington) University – on September 12, 1978. Foundations funded startup costs.
The first class was 57 strong. In those early days, EPS was for women only. Men were soon admitted to the program. Four years later, EPS opened its Virginia program, just across the Potomac River in the Diocese of Arlington. The EPS Connecticut program followed the next year. Other openings came next: an evening program serving the Archdiocese of Washington (1984); the Vincent Pallotti Institute for English-speaking Catholics in Rome (1985), an evening program in Bridgeport (1992), the Cardinal Newman Center for the Laity in the Diocese of Venice, FL (Naples, 1994), and an evening program in the Archdiocese of New York (1997).
Four affiliated programs, separately governed and financed, have adopted the EPS model in London, England; Madison, WI; Fargo, ND, and at Immaculate Conception Seminary, West Orange, NJ.
Following Sister Joan’s retirement in 1993, Sister Mary Ann Cook, SND, D.Phil, led EPS until early 2007 when Dr. Margaret Wilson McCarty became its first lay president. Sister Joan Bland died on June 29, 2008, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Sr. Mary Ann continues to serve on the EPS faculty and as President Emerita on the EPS Board.
Today, the EPS Network, which continues to be based at Trinity (Washington) University, is an independent entity that operates five programs in the Archdiocese of Washington and the Dioceses of Arlington and Bridgeport. It has commissioned 2,716 graduates for service in their parishes and communities.
