FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Lisa Darden, a master's candidate in the Public Administration and Nonprofit Studies program and current senior administrative assistant for the city of Fayetteville's Community Resources Division, received the Henry M. Alexander Scholarship at the 2018 Arkansas City Management Association's fall meeting, hosted by the Arkansas Municipal League in North Little Rock.

The scholarship is awarded to distinguished public administration graduate students who are committed to a local government career.

The public administration faculty in the Department of Political Science in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, selected Darden for her excellence in the classroom and her expressed commitment to a public service career,

In 1997, the Arkansas City Management Association established this scholarship program in honor of University of Arkansas professor Henry M. Alexander, who is considered the "father of city management" in Arkansas. One student from each of the three Master of Public Administration programs in the state (University of Arkansas, Arkansas State University, and University of Arkansas at Little Rock) are chosen to receive this distinguished award.

Alexander, born in September 1905, graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina, received his master's degree in political science from Princeton University, and in 1934 completed his doctoral studies at the University of Missouri. In 1937 Alexander was offered a position as professor of government at the University of Arkansas where he founded the department and served as chair in 1939, which later, in 1966, became formally recognized as the Department of Political Science. Throughout his career he served as an adviser to many state agencies, numerous cities, and counties in Arkansas and brought the council/manager form of local government to Arkansas. Alexander's dedication towards local government is memorialized through this scholarship endeavor.