Victoria DeFrancesco Soto realizes two things during our lunch meeting at the Capital Hotel in downtown Little Rock. The first is that Arkansas is a small state where you're liable to see anyone from the governor on down on a given day. The second is that the Capital Bar & Grill is a place to see and be seen.
Sitting at the next table is former Gov. Mike Huckabee. Just across the room is Mike Preston, the state's commerce secretary. I introduce DeFrancesco Soto to both, not so much because she needs to know them but because they need to know her. DeFrancesco Soto will be a star in this state, providing additional intellectual capital for a place that's moving into a new era.
DeFrancesco Soto was selected in September as dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, filling a job left open by the retirement of legendary Arkansan Skip Rutherford. A national search found her at the University of Texas in Austin, where she was assistant dean for civic engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.
There's symmetry here since DeFrancesco Soto still works in close proximity to a presidential library--Lyndon Johnson's in Austin and Bill Clinton's in Little Rock.
If you recognized her name when she was hired, it might be because she's a regular contributor to NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. She was on the air for Telemundo as part of its coverage of President Joe Biden's State of the Union address earlier this year. In addition to being a respected member of the academic community, DeFrancesco Soto is among the country's best young political commentators.
Along with her expertise in campaigns and elections, DeFrancesco Soto specializes in the areas of immigration, political psychology, and women and politics. She's the first Hispanic dean at a presidential institution and was named by Diverse magazine as one of the top 12 scholars in the country.
DeFrancesco Soto, who was raised in southern Arizona, received a bachelor's degree in political science and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona followed by a master's degree and doctorate from Duke University. With degrees from Arizona and Duke, it should come as no surprise that she's a college basketball fan.
Husband Neftali Garcia is vice president of government affairs for McLane Co. of Temple, Texas, a giant wholesale supply-chain company. McLane distributes groceries and non-food items to convenience stores, discount retailers, drugstores, military bases and restaurants. DeFrancesco Soto says her husband can work from anywhere as long as it's near an airport that allows him to fly to various state capitals.
The couple purchased a home in Little Rock and enrolled their children in school here. She understands the history of the Clinton School and its mission to serve a once-rural state that's rapidly becoming more urbanized and diverse.
"It's still a very young school," she says. "There's so much potential. The opportunity to achieve that potential was among the things that attracted me here. Another attraction is the public service aspect of the school. You can take this master's degree and use it in business, engineering or medicine. It's all about serving people. We provide students the tool kit they need to better serve other people."
The school, housed in a former railroad depot on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center, was established in 2004. Former U.S. Sen. David Pryor was the first dean. Rutherford, who was instrumental in getting the presidential library to Little Rock, was dean from 2006 until his retirement last year. The Clinton School became the first in the country to offer a master's degree in public service.
Planning began early in Clinton's second term. Rutherford joined forces with the late Diane Blair (a well-known University of Arkansas political scientist), Pat Torvestad of the UA System office, UA System President B. Alan Sugg and others to draw up plans. They visited schools named for former presidents.
In addition to the LBJ School in Austin, the group visited the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Those schools primarily prepare students for careers in government service. The Clinton team decided to broaden their approach in order to appeal to students entering other fields.
They also chose not to put the school on a university campus.
"We made it truly an urban school with access to the River Market District as our student union, the main library of the Central Arkansas Library System as our library, the Clinton Presidential Center and the Heifer International headquarters," Rutherford says. "We didn't need a major infrastructure commitment because it was already there."
The school admits between 45 and 50 incoming students each year.
"We can grow that to about 75," DeFrancesco Soto says. "One of the attractions for students is that they get out of the classroom and go into the field from the get-go. They first find a project within three hours of Little Rock. They next do an international project and then a capstone project.
"You've heard that cliché about thinking globally and acting locally. Well, our students do that. Their projects have a positive influence on the lives of people in Arkansas. It's this beautiful local-national-international model of public service. I'm excited to be a part of it."
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.