The Clinton School of Public Service recently released their first-ever impact report, indicating the past 20 years have resulted in more than $15 million in economic impact and 1,500 field service projects completed in the community. Victoria DeFrancesco Soto is the dean of the Clinton School. She says they wanted to take a moment to reflect on the work they've accomplished so far.
Soto: We had been very busy doing things, having impact in our communities, and this was a moment to say, OK, let's take a breath and really stand back and appreciate all of the work that we've done — so much of it here in Arkansas, but also across the nation and across the world. So there was that piece of it. And then as we're looking forward — what comes for the next 20 years and beyond — looking at what we've done and what we want to continue to grow out, what new things we want to do, it was important for us to have this grounding document.
Moore: How did you decide which topics to focus on for the report?
Soto: We wanted to give a big picture view of what we were doing. And to back up for a moment, the majority of our work is here in Arkansas. All of our first-year practicum projects that our graduate students do — the only criteria is that they're in Arkansas. They can be in education and health, in city management, you name it, we've done it. And then we also wanted to showcase the national work that we do and the international work that we do. But then we wanted to, as I mentioned earlier, provide some of that human face to what we're doing. And in talking about what happens afterwards, highlight — and quite frankly, show off — the fact that our graduates are in a very strong place post-graduation. So our graduates, 92% of them — more than nine out of 10 — within six months are employed. Our alumni are in leadership roles in the public sector, in the private sector, in the nonprofit sector. And I think it's really important for us, as we're training that next generation of leaders regardless of sector, that we are able to highlight this. I think all of us here in the Clinton School community know this, but we wanted to make sure that we had that clear portrait for the rest of the state and the nation to see.
Moore: One of the things I think public radio does well is we spend the appropriate amount of time talking about the what and the how, but I love being able to share the why of so many stories. Maybe you can give us some examples of the whys — when we think about people who are making an impact on the state level, the national level, the global level.
Soto: Absolutely. One example — it was one of our earlier practicum projects, but it continues to have impact to this very day — is the Delta Arts Festival. This takes place in Newport, and this was a student project where they were tasked with revitalizing downtown Newport. This evolved into a festival that has really become a premier arts festival that draws thousands of attendees and hundreds of artists annually. The 2025 festival had an estimated $2 million impact in this small town in the Delta, and this is something that has been going on for well over a decade. It's an impact that just keeps on giving and keeps on building on itself.
Another recent project is with the Arkansas Rural Health Partnership, where a student of ours designed a toolkit for food as prescription. For folks who are in rural communities who maybe don't have access to those foods that will really address health issues that they're having — especially our seniors, our most vulnerable population — he was able to create this project of pairing the seniors with their Rx, their food needs, and getting that to them.
A national level one — outside of Arkansas — is this great project supporting veterans. I think most folks are familiar with Pat Tillman. The Pat Tillman Foundation is based out of Arizona, and one of our students, Hunter Riley, was tasked with evaluating their leadership through action program and really strengthening it — saying, OK, this is what you're doing well, this is what you can be doing better to support veterans and to support their families.
And an international project — because all of our students do an international public service project between their first and their second year. The idea is that evaluating, doing program planning, figuring out how you make your community stronger and better is not something that stops at one border. We wanted to have that global lens in the toolkit. We had a project in Tanzania where our students evaluated entrepreneurship programs for marginalized youth and figured out how they can be more effective, how you can reach more of these marginalized youth.
It is a wide variety of projects that we do. But when you stand back, you see that the common core is about how do you strengthen these communities in what they need. Community members, private sector, public sector come to us with projects. We don't go out into the community and say, hey, we think you need this. They come to us, and that's where we're able to roll up our sleeves and figure out how we serve through problem solving.
Moore: Can we talk a little bit more about the Newport Arts Festival? Because I think it's fascinating to think about how an arts festival — something we think of as just an event that is meant to appreciate and enjoy art — can be an economic boon for a community and can be seen as a public service. I think that might surprise folks, because I think we usually think the economic basket is over here and the arts basket is over here, and the two shall never meet.
Soto: That is absolutely wrong. Because we want to think about the ecosystem that we're building in our communities. We want to think about the support for our artists, and we also want to think about the social capital that we're creating through that, where we're bringing people together — and also the tourism piece of that. And so that's what goes directly into the economic impact. And what I love about this project — in addition to what you pointed out so well, Matthew — is that linkage between the economic revitalization and the ability to have artists and creative talents flourish. It's buildable. Rome was not built in a day. The fact that this is such a successful festival is because it has been building that reputation, and folks are learning about it and they're traveling from different parts of the region. But you first had to have that strategic plan, that research that was done beforehand to figure out what would be the best type of project for this region. All of that legwork that you don't see — you had to have that. And then that's where the growth starts to happen. What I like to think of as a catalytic impact.
Moore: You spent quite some time recently thinking about the last 20 years of the school and the impact that it's had. What are some new ways or some things you're excited about when you think about the next 20 years and the legacy you're hoping to create through that work?
Soto: All that impact — I just want to amplify that. That's the low-hanging fruit. The other part I'm quite excited about is our work in AI, because we tend to think about AI in maybe the private sector or in tech, but at the end of the day, AI is going to touch all of us. So I want to make sure that the Clinton School is out front at the intersection of AI and public service. We have the Open Governance Lab here with some tremendous faculty members. One of the projects they're working on is an AI-powered cybersecurity evaluation tool for local governments to use and to keep them safe, because these are small municipalities that don't have the money to hire a whole IT crew. But through AI, they can help safeguard themselves. We also want to be ethical and cautious about how we use AI. This semester, we are teaching a first-ever class on AI and public service — myself and two faculty members from the Open Governance Lab. We are also co-guest editing a special journal edition in the Journal of Public Affairs on AI and public service. Look, it's here whether you like it or not — AI is here. So let's understand how we can harness it to better serve our public value interests.
Moore: Dean Soto, anything I missed, anything you want to make sure we touch on?
Soto: Let me talk a little bit about the Impact Center. The Clinical Impact Center was launched a little over a year ago, and essentially this is a place where groups — public, private, nonprofit — can come to us for different needs. We've worked with the Arkansas Department of Health. We are working with Bridge to Rwanda, an international organization. These are entities that come to us with projects that we just don't have the capacity to do with our student field service projects, or that maybe are a little bit more elevated and we need different expertise. What we found is that there is an impact evaluation desert in Arkansas and in the region, and that folks were going to Texas or they were going to other places or the coasts. I said, we have all of these resources here to serve our community — let us do that. We started off with one project and said, let's see how it goes, let's see if there's a demand. Within three months we'd already had half a dozen projects. A year later, we're at 20 projects and we've already hired an additional three people. The demand is there. And to be able to just increase that footprint of impact in our region is where we're going in those next 20 years.
Victoria DeFrancesco Soto is the dean of the Clinton School of Public Service.
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