Posted by BEN BEAUMONT – The fifth-year anniversary of the Clinton School was marked today with a panel discussion about the school’s early days.
University of Arkansas President Alan Sugg and Senator David Pryor, the founding dean of the school, joined former associate dean Tom Bruce and Pat Torvestad, former director of planning and development at the UA System, to reminisce about their work in the school’s planning.
Video of the panel, which was moderated by Clinton School academic dean Mike Hemphill, will be posted soon at www.clintonschoolspeakers.com.
Sugg presented to Dean Skip Rutherford a February 1997 letter he received from President Clinton in which the president requested his library have an academic affiliation with the University of Arkansas.
That began a process that would result in a graduate program that offers the nation’s first master’s degree in public service.
The president’s decision to locate his library in Arkansas and affiliate with the university was “one of the biggest decisions ever made for the state of Arkansas,” Sugg said. “It was just tremendous for us.”
Sugg tapped Torvestad, who consulted with University of Arkansas political science chair and longtime Clinton friend Diane Blair, to begin planning what the university’s affiliation with the library might look like.
After researching other presidential schools and programs in public affairs, public policy and public administration, the planners saw a need for a new and different program.
“We took a bold new step” in creating a new discipline geared toward public service, said Bruce, who became the school’s first employee when he was hired in 2003.
The new program would be “practitioner-based” and “focus of solving real-world problems,” Torvestad said.
Fresh of a stint as dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Pryor took his post as the school’s first dean in 2004 before the school welcomed its inaugural class of students in the fall of 2005.
Five years later, the school has admitted more than 100 students who are pursuing careers in public service that span all types of fields, including nonprofit, governmental, volunteer and private sector work.
“This school is the most exciting thing that’s happening in higher education in America today,” Pryor said.
Founding Dean David Pryor, former Associate Dean Tom Bruce, UA President Alan Sugg and Pat Torvestad discuss the planning of the Clinton School.
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