Frank W. Hale Jr. mentored thousands of students as a professor, and his promotion of scholarships for minorities helped The Ohio State University become the top producer of black Ph.D.s in the 1970s.

Hale, who died yesterday at age 84, was also the first black dean at the Ohio State Graduate School and the first non-clergy to serve as president of Oakwood University, an historically black college directly affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church's world headquarters and located in Huntsville, Alabama.

"He brought to leadership a broader base for Christian education, not simply religion, but also religion and pure education," said Mervyn Warren, Oakwood provost, professor of religion and former interim president.

Hale taught a class each year he served as Oakwood president, and he established the school's department of public relations. Under his tenure, Oakwood joined the United Negro College Fund. He served as president from 1966 to 1971, before accepting the position at Ohio State as associate dean of the graduate school, chair of the fellowship committee and professor of communication.

As the fellowship committee chair, Hale helped grant nearly $15 million to some 1,200 minority graduate students. He also initiated a minority scholars program for high school graduating seniors.

Hale served as a professor at Ohio State from 1971 to 1988, before his appointment as vice provost. A campus building is named after him -- Hale Hall, which also houses the Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center.

"Dr. Hale was a pioneer in the educational field for this nation and for the Seventh-day Adventist Church," said Ella Simmons, a vice president of the Adventist world church, who also served in executive posts at Oakwood, La Sierra University and the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

"He made the right connections to bridge the divide between public and private schools. I have learned a lot from him," Simmons said.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Hale attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in communication and political science in 1950 and 1951. He earned a Ph.D. in communication and political science from Ohio State in 1955.

Hale was also awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in English Literature from the University of London in 1960.

Hale served as a professor at Oakwood from 1951 to 1959 and chaired the department of English at Central State University from 1959 to 1966. He lectured at more than 300 colleges and universities.

He later received honorary doctoral degrees from Wilberforce University, Shaw University, University of Nebraska, Capital University, La Sierra and Andrews University.

The first two of his three retirement attempts were unsuccessful. Hale served as executive assistant for the president at Kenyon College from 1989 to 1992 and as distinguished university representative and consultant in the office of the president at Ohio State from 1999-2005.

"We have lost one of the true giants of the Ohio State community," Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee said in a statement yesterday.

"Dr. Frank Hale was a scholar, teacher, researcher, administrator, a civil rights pioneer. More than that, he was a force to be reckoned with who opened the doors of opportunity to underserved students through sheer force of his intellect and determination," Gee said.

Hale was inducted in the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame in October.

He is survived by his wife Mignon Scott-Hale, a retired school teacher. His first wife, Ruth, preceded him in death in 2001.

Ifeoma Kwesi, one of his three children, is an assistant professor at Oakwood.

--additional reporting by Mark A. Kellner