Press Release: University of Arkansas Course on Clinton Administration

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), in collaboration with the University of Arkansas System, will offer a new upper level and graduate course on the Clinton presidency next January – a course that is expected to be a prototype for the system's Clinton School of Public Service.

The Clinton Foundation will have no role in designing the curriculum of the course, but university and foundation officials anticipate arrangements that could offer scholars unprecedented access to former Clinton administration staff members and assistance in scheduling guest speakers.

Clinton plans to meet with the students toward the end of the semester.

Dr. Margaret E. Scranton, chair of the UALR Department of Political Science, will develop the curriculum and teach the course at the UA Systems administration building, 2404 N. University Ave., on Thursday evenings beginning in January 2003. Scranton will teach a second section of the class on-line, enabling students worldwide to seek admission to the class for transfer credit.

“This is a deliberate attempt not to miss the boat as some other universities located near presidential libraries have regretted and to take advantage of the presence of visiting speakers, exhibits and conferences that will occur at the Clinton Library and School,” said Scranton, UALR's 2001 Teaching Excellence Award winner.

The Clinton Presidency class is expected to be the first in a series of academic endeavors UALR hopes to develop to take advantage of the campus's close proximity to former president's library and archives.

Scranton said she envisions future courses that could be designed to take advantage of the 80 to 100 million documents – the largest collection of presidential documents in history — being catalogued by the Clinton Presidential Materials Project Documents Project. The collection will be housed in Little Rock at the William J. Clinton Library.

“The Clinton presidency is a topic that spans departments,” she said, mentioning potential interest in presidential courses for majors in Journalism, Speech Communications, Rhetoric and Writing – even Health Services Administration.

Clinton Foundation President Skip Rutherford will work with Scranton so students can have the opportunity to pose questions on clintonstaff.com, a private network that keeps the Clinton alumni in touch with each other.

Rutherford said organizers of the Clinton library were advised by representatives of other presidential libraries to collect a database of staff members so access to important information wouldn't be lost to historians.

“Some of the most interesting historical memoranda and documents were written by junior staffers or legislative assistants who never made the history books until 25-30 years later,” Rutherford said.

The foundation has agreed to help schedule special visitors to the library to coincide with class meetings. Guest lecturers will include Bruce Lindsey, Clinton's closest aide who rarely speaks publicly about his White House experiences. The foundation director also has offered assistance in encouraging figures outside the Clinton circle to be available for Scranton students as guest lecturers.

Scranton said she hoped the class would hear from Wesley Clark, the retired general and NATO commander during the Kosovo operation; House impeachment manager Asa Hutchison of Fort Smith, currently the Bush administration's drug czar; David Kendall, Clinton's personal lawyer; 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole and others.

UALR's emphasis on integrating technology across the curriculum, some speakers can appear through video conferencing, compressed video and other high-tech formats.

The initial class will be limited 25 students on line and 25 students in the classroom. Because of these space limitations, enrollment will require approval of the instructor – a similar requirement of the Political Science Department's Capitol Hill seminar course that involves a trip to Washington. Prospective students will complete a one-page application, including a writing sample. Scranton said the class will be academically rigorous. Undergraduates can expect to spend three hours outside of class for each hour of class per week – four to five hours for graduate students.

Initially, Scranton said she plans to teach the Clinton Presidency course each spring. If demand warrants, a section in fall 2003 could be added. Eventually, the course could be expanded to two semesters concentrating on each of the two Clinton administrations.

Scranton, who traditionally teaches UALR's course on the American Presidency, received her PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to coming to UALR, Scranton was a foreign policy studies research fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Her fields of specialization include American government and politics, including public policy, American government and institutions, and legislative and executive processes. She also specializes in foreign policy processes, comparative foreign policy, international politics, international relations theory and international conflict and conflict management.

# # #

Learn more about our work at https://www.clintonfoundation.org/about, on Facebook at Facebook.com/ClintonFoundation and on Twitter @ClintonFdn.