Dawn Zekis: "The Clinton School is an amazing gift from the people of Arkansas." |
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(THVideo: Click here to see an Arkansas Business on THV report on this story.)
Dawn Zekis had never been as far south as Arkansas before checking out grad schools. The South Dakotan applied "on a whim" to the Clinton School of Public Service, which in the summer of 2005 was assembling its first-ever class: 16 students who would study and work toward the country's first master's degree in public service.
"I thought I wouldn't get in," she said recently in her office at the Arkansas Department of Human Services, where she's the director of policy and planning. But she was accepted, and once her decision came down to the Clinton School or the far more established University of North Carolina, she was swayed by Tom Bruce, then an associate dean, who encouraged her to join something new and full of possibility.
The pitch worked, and Zekis moved with her now-husband to Little Rock. After graduating as a member of the inaugural Clinton School class, she went to work as a policy analyst for DHS.
"The Clinton School," Zekis said, "is an amazing gift from the people of Arkansas."
The state is finding that the gift runs both ways. Five years after opening its doors, the University of Arkansas-affiliated grad school in the old train station that shares grounds with the Clinton Presidential Library has become a magnet for talent from around the country and the world.
While Clinton School graduates go on to work across the country and around the world, many find their attachment to their service projects and to the community keeps them in Arkansas.
"What I see is a lot of talent that would have never, ever come through Arkansas, except for the Clinton School, staying here," said Joe Ballard, the school's director of international service projects, a 2007 graduate. "It's still small numbers but it's significant coming here."
Common Traits
Clinton School students, though tough to stereotype, do have some common traits. They're bright, and tend to speak in complete paragraphs, using sentences curlicued with subordinate clauses. They tend to dress nattily (school dress code and all), to make eye contact, to participate, to care. They arrive in Little Rock from points near and far: The 134 students in the five classes that the school has admitted have hailed from 17 countries and 32 states plus Washington, D.C., and about half of them have "Arkansas connections," Clinton School Dean Skip Rutherford said, adding that many have lived here.
The school reports that about 40 percent of its 64 graduates have so far remained in Arkansas. That number includes alumni working in government, policy, nonprofits and media, as well as graduates who are continuing their educations in the joint degree programs in law, business and public health at other University of Arkansas institutions. About 90 percent of graduates have gotten jobs.
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