Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, the new dean of the University of Arkansas System's Clinton School of Public Service. She was selected to lead the school after the retirement of longtime dean James "Skip" Rutherford.
The University of Arkansas System has picked Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, an assistant dean for civic engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, to be the next dean of the Clinton School of Public Service.
DeFrancesco Soto will be recommended for approval at the Sept. 16-17 meeting of the university system’s Board of Trustees, the system said in a news release Tuesday. She’s expected to start the job on Jan. 3.
DeFrancesco Soto was selected after a national search that followed the retirement of longtime dean James “Skip” Rutherford on June 30.
Susan Hoffpauir, professor and academic dean at the Clinton School, has been serving as interim dean.
System President Donald Bobbitt said in the release that he “couldn’t be more pleased” with how the search for Rutherford’s successor was conducted. DeFrancesco Soto, who holds master’s and doctoral degrees in political science from Duke University, was one of three finalists who visited the Clinton School campus in Little Rock this summer.
“In the end,” Bobbitt said in the release, “Dr. DeFrancesco Soto was the right fit to continue growing and developing the unique school’s academic programs, as well as its continued community outreach and mission to make an impact in Arkansas and around the world.”
DeFranceso Soto’s salary will be $250,000, a system spokesperson said.
She’s a faculty fellow at the University of Texas’ Center for the Science of Race and Democracy and an affiliate at the school’s Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies. Her areas of expertise include immigration, women and politics, and political psychology.
DeFrancesco Soto said in the release that public service is vital to “creating a space for people to engage with one another and find common ground.”
“There so much that the Clinton School and its students and faculty have already accomplished in its short history, and I look forward to building even more capacity for the school to strive toward President Clinton’s vision of a graduate program that builds bridges through public service,” she said.
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