Epicenter

Terms of Use

Last updated September 9, 2025

 Table of Contents

  1. Who We are and Services We Offer Subject to these Terms
  2. Limits on Who May Use Our Services and For What Purposes
  3. Your Use of Our Services (Rights and Limits)
  4. Our Use of Content (Rights and Limits)
  5. Community Guidelines
  6. Feedback
  7. Third-Party Content
  8. Intellectual Property and Confidentiality Rights
  9. DMCA Notice
  10. Reporting Security, Availability and Confidentiality Incidents to Us
  11. User Accounts
  12. Privacy Policy
  13. Disclaimers
  14. Limitations of Liability
  15. Indemnity
  16. Jurisdictional Matters
  17. Additional Terms
  18. Contact Us

  1. WHO WE ARE AND SERVICES WE OFFER SUBJECT TO THESE TERMS

We are The Institute for Excellence in Education, doing business as Epicenter TM ("Company," "we," "us," "our"), a Michigan company with offices at 711 W Pickard St., Suite M, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858. We operate a proprietary web-based software platform known as EpicenterTM accessible from https://epicenternow.org/ or such successor links (the “Site”) or via mobile applications as we may make available from time to time. Such Site and the Epicenter functionality and any other products or services (collectively, “Services”) that link to these Terms of Use (the “Legal Terms”) are only made accessible to authorized users subject to these Legal Terms. There are public portions of the Site and Services visitors to the Site may browse for information, but most of our Services require authorization from the user’s organization that contracts with us to enable authorized users designated by the user’s organization to access the Services.

  1. LIMITS ON WHO MAY USE OUR SERVICES AND FOR WHAT PURPOSES

We contract with organizations (“Customers”) under a separate enterprise agreement for our Services. Our Customers may permit users they authorize to access the Services for the benefit of the Customer only (and not to benefit the user individually or to benefit a third party), solely for support of the Customer’s internal operations subject to individual users’ acceptance of these Legal Terms. “Internal operations” means education-related operations such as operating schools or school districts, provided that no outside or third-party IT, technology or software consultants or contractors engaged by the Customer may access the Services as an authorized user of any Customer without our prior written consent in each instance.

If you do not meet the purposes for using the Services above or are within the restricted group of IT professionals described above, please stop using the Services immediately and do not register an account with us before you contact both us and the Customer you support. Our contact details are at the end of these Legal Terms.

Access to the Epicenter offering by unauthorized persons or without agreeing to abide by these Legal Terms is strictly prohibited. Please discontinue use of the Services immediately if you do not agree to any portion of these Legal Terms. In such event, please notify the Customer granting you access or contact us.  By clicking “accept,” reaffirming your acceptance or assent to these Legal Terms as they are updated from time to time, or using our Services, you evidence your acceptance and agreement to abide by all of these Legal Terms as then currently in effect. These Legal Terms constitute a legally binding obligation on you, both for yourself  personally and in your role as an authorized user on behalf of the Customer granting your access to the Services ("you").

By accessing the Services, you represent to us that: (1) your access to use the Services is authorized both by the Customer you support and under these Legal Terms, (2) you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by all of these Legal Terms, and (3) and you are a legal U.S. resident at least 18 years old (or older of the age of majority is higher than 18 where you reside). IF YOU CANNOT MAKE  THE  REPRESENTATIONS IN (1), (2) AND (3) ABOVE,  THEN YOU ARE EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED FROM USING THE SERVICES AND YOU MUST DISCONTINUE USE IMMEDIATELY.

  1. YOUR USE OF OUR SERVICES (RIGHTS AND LIMITS)

Public aspects of the Site that do not require a login are available to Site visitors for viewing only for their own personal, information purposes of a noncommercial nature.

The other Services accessible via login only may be used by the authorized users described above solely for the Customer’s “internal operations” (as described in Section 2 above), or information purposes of a noncommercial nature. By extension, you as the authorized user of the Customer, may only use the Services for the same purposes.

“Noncommercial” as used in these Legal Terms means you cannot link to the Site or other Services from another site, product or service without our prior written permission in each instance, use the Site or Services to scrape information, data, text, images or other content, use them to train artificial intelligence systems, bots or similar agents, use them to benchmark a competitive service or use the Services to compete with us or the Services or infringe, misappropriate or violate our intellectual property rights in and to the Services.

You are free to use content owned by the Customer providing you with access to the Services, which is available to you in or through the Services, as agreed between you and that Customer. Otherwise, as regards other content, materials and data available via the Services, you may not – other than as expressly permitted in the next paragraph below – copy, use, modify, create derivative works from or otherwise exploit any portion of the Services or any content, materials, information, products or services obtained via the Site or any other Services.

Whether you access the Services outside of a login as a “guest” or via a login, you may display and, subject to any expressly stated restrictions or limitations relating to specific material on the Site, electronically copy, download onto your computer, mobile device or other technology used to access the Services, and print single hard copy portions of the materials, content and data available via the Services solely for your own personal, information purposes or for your noncommercial, lawful use in supporting the Customer’s internal  operations (defined in Section 2). If you make other unpermitted use of the Services,  you may violate assorted laws protecting our rights  and may be subject to personal liability for such unauthorized use in addition to violating these Legal Terms.

In addition to any limits elsewhere in these Legal Terms, your use of the Services is further subject to the followings prohibitions on use of the Services; you shall not:

  • modify the Services;
  • decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any Services or any portion thereof (including systems, source code and software used to operate the Services);
  • circumvent or attempt to circumvent or avoid any security protocols or limitations on your access to portions of the Services or materials, content or data therein;
  • interfere with or disrupt the integrity or performance of the Services or the data contained therein; use  Services in any manner that could violate applicable laws or damage, disable, overburden, or impair the Services; or interfere with any other party’s use and enjoyment of the Services;
  • direct others to directly or indirectly use or access the Services contrary to any limits in these Legal Terms;
  • knowingly introduce, or permit the introduction of, any viruses, spyware, malware, adware, worms, malicious code, ransomware, or other rogue software, agents or routines into the Services or their underlying systems;
  • copy any logos, features, functions, algorithms, graphics, videos or code from the Services as part of a derivative work of the Services or otherwise create derivative works of or from the Services; in particular, you may not copy or adapt the Services' software, including but not limited to Flash, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, or other code;
  • use the Services as part of any effort to compete with us or otherwise use the Services for any revenue-generating endeavor or commercial enterprise (outside of use for support of Customer’s business strictly in accordance with these Legal Terms);
  • use the Licensed Software for benchmarking purposes with other software, to design or develop competing software or services, to compete with us;
  • use the Services to collect usernames and/or email addresses of users by electronic or other means for the purpose of marketing to them or sending unsolicited email;
  • advertise or sell other goods and services via the Services;
  • use the Services to train bots, artificial intelligence services or agents;
  • systematically retrieve data or other content from the Services to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a collection, compilation, database, or directory without written permission from us;
  • impersonate us or any other person; attempt to trick, mislead or defraud another user, including to gain unauthorized access to their log-in credentials;
  • fail to safeguard your log-in credentials used to access the Services;
  • share your log-in credentials with another person;
  • fail to promptly notify us of any unauthorized access or suspected unauthorized access to the Services of which you become aware; or
  • use the Services outside of the United States.

Use of any of our Services made available through a third-party social sharing platform is also subject to the platform’s applicable terms and conditions.

The Customer that authorized your use of the Services may also have additional separate requirements for your use of the Services that we do not control.

Use of the Services other than as permitted under these Legal Terms is deemed to be  a material breach of these Legal Terms and we may immediately suspend or terminate your right to use our Services without prior notice. If you are dissatisfied with the Services, you may discontinue use of the Services as agreed between you and the Customer that granted you (as its authorized user) access. We are glad to receive feedback about your experiences with the Services as well.

  1. OUR USE OF CONTENT(RIGHTS AND LIMITS)

As between us and Customer (including you, the authorized user of Customer), we claim no ownership interest in the business-related or personal information of Customer, its staff, its students, is schools, and its authorized users such as you (“Customer Content”), which is uploaded by or on behalf of, and processed across, the Services by a Customer’s users of the Services (including by yourself). However, we retain all rights in and to all aspects of the Services, or content, materials, data, information, graphics, videos, code, algorithms and any other elements of the Services of any nature whatsoever, excluding Customer Content. Also, the Feedback (defined in Section 6 below) that you submit is not considered Customer Content or your content and belongs to us. See Section 6 below.

Please be aware that under its separate agreement with us, Customer grants us the right to use the Customer Content, which would include all content you upload or process through the Services as the Customer’s user. We may use such content as needed to provide the Services, maintain, improve, defend and troubleshoot them and our legal rights. You also hereby agree we have, and grant to us, a non-exclusive, royalty-free, paid up, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual right to use any content you submit through the Services whether or not it would otherwise come within the term Customer Content to use as we determine to provide the Services, maintain, improve, defend and troubleshoot them and our legal rights. Please do not share any Customer Content through the Services you are not authorized to share through the Services, or otherwise share content that you do not want us to access.

Additionally, do not provide to us or upload to the Services any protected health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or other privacy laws, or sensitive personal information such as social security numbers, which has no connection with the Services we provide. If your role with Customer requires that you disclose personal information of anyone else other than yourself, in particular of any students at a school of Customer, you represent, warrant and covenant to us that you have all necessary permissions and consents, to the extent required by applicable law, including, without limitation the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) as necessary to process such personal information through the Services.

Further, all content you submit to or through the Services is subject to the additional “community guidelines” below in keeping with the good reputation of our Customers and our own business.

  1. COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

 Any content you upload, post, submit or otherwise process through the Services cannot violate any privacy, publicity, intellectual property or proprietary right of any other person or organization, or violate applicable laws. Nor may the content violate any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or confidentiality rights of any third party. It must also be in keeping with the Customer’s own standards for content, which we assume include limits on disparagement, harassment, incitement of violence or illegal conduct, sexually explicit, or otherwise objectionable content (as we or they may determine), including, without limitation, sexist, racist, libelous, slanderous content, or content discriminating against other persons or groups. In any event, we do not permit such types of content to be processed via the Services and, while we have no obligation to screen content on the Services, if it comes to our attention such content is present, we reserve all legal rights and remedies to address the same. We expect users of our Services to exercise good judgment regarding appropriate content and will thus keep this Section short.

  1. FEEDBACK

We need to differentiate a subset of content or information you may share with us directly or via the Services, which we own. Any question, comment, suggestion, idea, feedback, data or other information about the Services or your experience with the Services that you communicate to us ("Feedback"), is our property to do with as we determined. You hereby  assign to us all right, title and interest thereto, along with all copyrights, patents and trademarks, and any other intellectual property rights, in such Feedback, which Feedback we are free to use or not use for any purpose as we determine without any compensation, notice or attribution to you, or review by you. We do not waive any rights we may have to similar or related ideas previously known to us or developed by our employees and representatives, or obtained from sources other than you.

  1. THIRD-PARTY CONTENT

The Services may contain links to other third party websites (not operated by us or by the Customer), which may be of interest to you. We are not responsible for the content of any third party websites. Your use of any other linked website is at your own risk, and you should be aware that, unless otherwise indicated, these Terms no longer govern. Please be mindful of this as navigate  to outside websites. You should review the applicable terms and policies, including privacy practices, of any website you visit.  Our linking to a third party website is not an endorsement of the website, its content or operator.  

  1. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND CONFIDENTIALITY RIGHTS

 As indicated above, we generally do not control third party content or own Customer Content, provided we do own Feedback, even if provided to us by you or a Customer.

Additionally, we and our licensors own all right, title and interest in and to the Services as a collective work (excluding Customer Content), including all the content, materials, data, text, graphics, images, videos, interfaces, information, data, code and materials thereon or therein, the look and feel, selection and arrangement, design and organization of the Services, and the compilation of the content, code, data and materials on the Services, including but not limited to all intellectual property and proprietary rights therein. Your use of the Services does not grant to you ownership in or rights to of any of the foregoing. The Services are copyrighted as a collective work under the United States’ and other copyright laws, and such collective work is our property. The collective work may include works that are licensed to us.

Unless otherwise indicated on the Services, displayed trademarks, logos, emblems, service marks, trade names and trade dress (collectively, the “Marks”) are subject to the trademark rights of, and are proprietary to, us and our licensors. We do not grant any license or other authorization to use the Marks except through a separate written license agreement. Any trademarks or logos of our Customers or partners are the property of our Customers and partners and we reference them only for information purposes and make no claim to own or control such third party intellectual property.

You may not remove, obscure, or change any trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights or confidentiality notices in or on the Services. Our Services and Marks are protected by intellectual property  and unfair competition laws, and other proprietary rights, in the United States and around the world.

Non-public portions of the Services are confidential and proprietary to us, whether or not so marked. You may not permit others to use or access the non-public portions of the Services via your account and the limits on use of Services in these Legal Terms are intended to help protect the confidential nature of the non-public portions of the Services. Customer Content may also be confidential as notified to you by the Customer granting you access to the Services, and you should follow that Customer’s instructions as to such Customer Content.

  1. REPORTING SECURITY, AVAILABILITY, AND CONFIDENTIALITY INCIDENTS TO US

All Epicenter users are required to report any security, system vulnerability, or incident of which you become aware as quickly as possible to us, not later than 24 hours from discovery. Notify us at support+security@epicenternow.org

  1. DMCA NOTICE

‍The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides recourse to copyright owners who believe that their rights under the United States Copyright Act have been infringed by acts of third parties over the Internet. If you believe that your copyrighted work has been copied without your authorization and is available within the Services in a way that may constitute copyright infringement, you may provide notice of your claim to our designated agent listed below. For your notice to be effective, it must include the following information:

  • A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed;
  • A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed;
  • A description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located within the Services;
  • Information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact the complaining party, such as address, telephone number, and, if available, an e-mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted;
  • A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
  • A statement that the information in the notification is accurate and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

‍Our designated agent is:
Jackie Mullikin
The Institute for Excellence in Education
711 W Pickard St., Suite M
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858 USA
Email: Copyright@epicenternow.org

The designated agent should be contacted only if you believe that your work has been used or copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement and such infringement is occurring within the Services. Other inquires to the designated agent may not be answered.

  1. USER ACCOUNTS

You may be required to register to use the Services. You agree to keep your username, password and any other log-in credentials confidential and will be responsible for all use of your account, whether authorized or not.  We reserve the right to change a username you select if we determine, in our sole discretion, that it could cause confusion with another user or is otherwise objectionable. You may not sell or transfer your user account.

By using the Services, you represent and warrant that: (a) all registration information you submit will be true, accurate, current, and complete; (b) you will promptly update such registration information as necessary if it changes; and (c)  you will comply with all of these Legal Terms. We may suspend or terminate access to Services if these representations are untrue or become untrue.

  1. PRIVACY POLICY

We need certain personal information from users to make Services available, including to identify the Customer-authorized users using our Services. You understand that personal information of visitors to the Site and other users of the Services will be processed in accordance with  our Privacy Policy here: https://epicenternow.org/privacy-policy/.

  1. DISCLAIMERS

THE SERVICES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE MATERIALS, INFORMATION, CONTENT, FUNCTIONS, SERVICES, PRODUCTS, TEXT, GRAPHICS, AND LINKS THEREON AND THEREIN, ARE EACH PROVIDED “AS IS” AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE PURSUANT TO APPLICABLE LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, FREEDOM FROM COMPUTER VIRUS AND DATA LOSS, AND WARRANTIES ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR COURSE OF PERFORMANCE. WE DO NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE FUNCTIONS CONTAINED IN ANY SITE OR SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT ANY SERVICE OR THE SYSTEMS THAT MAKE ANY SERVICE OR SITE AVAILABLE ARE FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS. WE DO NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OF CONTENT FROM ANY SERVICE OR SITE OR WITH RESPECT TO ITS COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY, AVAILABILITY, ADEQUACY, USEFULNESS, TIMELINESS, SECURITY, RELIABILITY OR OTHERWISE. IF YOU ARE DISSATISFIED WITH A SERVICE, YOUR SOLE REMEDY IS TO DISCONTINUE USING IT.

  1. LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY

IN NO EVENT SHALL WE  OR ANY OF OUR OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, MEMBERS, PARTNERS, SHAREHOLDERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, LICENSORS OR SERVICE PROVIDERS (COLLECTIVELY, THE “PROTECTED ENTITIES”), BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, INCIDENTAL, EXEMPLARY OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, EVEN IF THE PROTECTED ENTITIES HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION UNDER CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE, INABILITY TO USE, OR PERFORMANCE OF ANY SERVICE OR SITE OR THE INFORMATION, SERVICES, PRODUCTS, AND MATERIALS AVAILABLE FROM ANY SITE. THESE LIMITATIONS SHALL APPLY NOTWITHSTANDING ANY FAILURE OF ESSENTIAL PURPOSE OF ANY LIMITED REMEDY. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE PROTECTED ENTITIES BE LIABLE FOR OR IN CONNECTION WITH ANY CONTENT POSTED, TRANSMITTED, EXCHANGED OR RECEIVED BY OR ON BEHALF OF ANY USER OR OTHER PERSON ON OR THROUGH A SERVICE. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF THE PROTECTED ENTITIES TO YOU FOR ALL DAMAGES, LOSSES, AND CAUSES OF ACTION (WHETHER IN CONTRACT OR TORT, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) IN THE AGGREGATE, ARISING FROM THESE OR YOUR USE OR MISUSE OF ANY SITE, EXCEED, IN THE AGGREGATE, $10 (UNITED STATED DOLLARS). WE INTEND THAT THESE LIMITATIONS APPLY TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, BUT SOME JURISDICTIONS MAY LIMIT THEIR APPLICABILITY AND THEY MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

  1. INDEMNITY

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold us and our licensors and services providers harmless from and against all claims, liabilities, losses, expenses, damages and costs, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, resulting in any way from any of the following:  (i) your breach of these Legal Terms, your communication, placement or transmission of any content or information of any type, in any form via any Services, your violation of the law, your violation of any third party rights, and for any act or omission  related to your use or misuse of any Services (including negligent or wrongful conduct), whether by you or any other person using an account registered to you.

  1. JURISDICTIONAL MATTERS

We are a U.S.-based business and our Services are operated out of the United States and our products, services, materials, offers, and information appearing on a Site are intended for U.S. users. We do not seek to make the Services available to users outside of the United States or encourage any users to access them from outside the United States. Any user doing so does so at their own risk and subject to all applicable laws.

These Legal Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Michigan, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions and each party shall submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the federal and state courts in Isabella County, Michigan. We also reserve the right to seek injunctive or other equitable relief to protect our confidential materials and information and proprietary and intellectual property rights exclusively in such courts and you and we irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of such courts in any such suit, action, or proceeding and each of us waives any objection based on improper venue or forum non conveniens.

If any provision of these Legal Terms is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, you and we nevertheless agree that the other provisions of the Legal Terms remain in full force and effect.

BY USING VISITING THE SITE OR USING THE SERVICES, YOU AGREE THAT REGARDLESS OF ANY STATUTE OR LAW TO THE CONTRARY, ANY CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM YOU MAY HAVE WITH RESPECT TO THE SITE OR THESE LEGAL TERMS  MUST BE COMMENCED WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION ARISES OR BE FOREVER BARRED.

  1. ADDITIONAL TERMS

  • These Legal Terms continue to apply to you for as long as you access or use the Services or maintain a user account with us, even if inactive. We reserve the right to pursue or enforce violations or breaches of these Legal Terms that occurred when a user used the Services even after a user ceases use of the same, and to avail ourselves of any and all other available legal remedies.
  • Our failure or delay to insist upon or enforce strict performance of any provision of these Legal Terms shall not be construed as a waiver of any provision or right. Neither the course of conduct between us nor trade practice shall act to modify any of these Legal Terms. We may assign or delegate our rights and duties under these Legal Terms to any party any time without notice to you.
  • We may suspend or terminate access to the Services for any violation or suspected violation of these Legal Terms without prior notice depending on the issue. If we terminate or suspend your account, you are prohibited from registering and creating a new account under your name, a fake or borrowed name, or the name of any third party, even if you may be acting on behalf of the third party. Additionally, we reserve the right to take appropriate legal action, including without limitation pursuing civil, criminal, and injunctive redress.
  • We cannot guarantee the Services will be available at all times. We may experience hardware, software, or other problems or need to perform maintenance related to the Services, resulting in interruptions, delays, or errors.
  • There may be information on the Services that contains typographical errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. We may but are not required to correct such issues as may come to our attention.
  • Interacting with the Services, viewing information in your user account, sending us emails or messages via the Services or your receiving the same are all electronic communications. You consent to receive electronic communications, and you agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures, and other communications we provide to you electronically, via email and on the Services, satisfy any legal requirement that such communication be in writing. You hereby waive any rights or requirements under any applicable laws in any jurisdiction that require an original signature or delivery or retention of non-electronic records.
  • We may modify the Services and these Legal Terms from time to time. The modified Legal Terms will become effective upon posting or notice to you by email or otherwise. By continuing to use the Services after the  date of changes to these Legal Terms, you agree to be bound by the modified Legal Terms. We recommend that you print a copy of the current Legal Terms for your records.

  1. CONTACT US. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at:

The Institute for Excellence in Education
711 W Pickard St., Suite M
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858 USA
Phone: (+1)855-889-1624
support@epicenternow.org