Derek Slagle is the director of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He formerly served as the director of the Survey Research Center.Concomitantly, he served as a state lead for Occupational Licensing Policy Learning Consortium, a three-year project supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor and managed jointly by the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments, and the National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices. Dr. Slagle has worked on over 2.5 million dollars of funded research – included grants from the CDC, Robert Wood Johnson and contracts with various state agencies, nonprofits, and for-profit companies.
As faculty in the Master of Public Administration program, he focuses on training the next generation of Arkansas leaders while emphasizing service and connecting theory to praxis. His research in Public Affairs Education, Higher Education, Community Development, & State Government have been published in a variety of academic journals.