Stacy Leeds joins board of Arvest Bank in Fayetteville

Stacy L. Leeds, dean and professor of law at the University of Arkansas School of Law since 2011, has joined the board of directors of Arvest Bank in Fayetteville.

“Stacy Leeds is an outstanding legal mind whose advice and service is in high demand,” Donny Story, president and CEO for Arvest Bank in Fayetteville, said in a news release. “We know that her involvement on our board will bring the highest benefit to both Arvest Bank and our customers.”

Leeds lectures on American Indian law, oil and gas, property, natural resources and introduction to legal studies, according to the release. She holds law degrees from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Tulsa. Leeds earned her master’s in business administration from the University of Tennessee and her bachelor’s from Washington University in St. Louis.

Leeds served in several capacities as a faculty member and administrator at the University of Kansas where she served as interim associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Law, director of the Tribal Law and Government Center and professor of law. While there, she received the Howard M. and Susan Immel Award for Teaching Excellence. In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, she served as interim chair of Indigenous Nations Studies. She was a senior administrative fellow in the Office of Provost from 2006-07. She also served on the law faculty at the University of North Dakota and as William H. Hastie Fellow at the University of Wisconsin School of Law.

Leeds was a recipient of the American Bar Association’s Spirit of Excellence Award in 2013, an elected member of the American Law Institute in 2011, and a former Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellow affiliated with the W.E.B. DuBois Research Institute at Harvard University in 2008-09. In 2015-16, she was affiliated with Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, Okla., as the Sequoyah Fellow.

A native of Muskogee, Okla., former athlete and life-long sports enthusiast, Leeds was inducted into the Muskogee Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015.