Ohio State University's new president has taken a strong stand ondiversity. Some say his is an example of the type of commitment Whitemale senior executives need to make if higher education's dreams ofdiversity are to be realized.

Frank Hale Jr. first encountered Dr. William E. Kirwan's commitmentto racial diversity two decades ago -- and it made an impression thatreverberates to this day.

Hale, now vice provost emeritus and professor at Ohio StateUniversity, had just been appointed Ohio State's vice provost forminority programs when he got a phone call from Kirwan, then provost atthe University of Maryland College Park. Hale had launched someinnovative initiatives to attract and keep African American and otherminority students at Ohio's largest university, and Kirwan wanted tofred out more.

"We must have talked an hour, an hour and a half," Hale says. "He was very interested."

Kirwan told Hale he wanted to visit OSU to see some of the programsup close. "Yeah, sure," Hale said to himself. "I've heard that before."

But Kirwan did, indeed, show up.

"He didn't deputize someone else to come, he came himself, and hespent quite a bit of time here," Hale recalls. "That showed me he had acommitment that went beyond the ordinary."

That was 1978. Now, twenty years later, Kirwan has returned to OhioState, this time as the university's president. He brings with him astrong track record on racial diversity issues that he established asprovost and president at the University of Maryland-College Park, wherehe helped boost minority student enrollment and lured several renownedBlack scholars to the university's faculty. His challenge now is toreplicate that success at Ohio State, the nation's second-largestuniversity campus with more than 48,000 students.

Events of lass spring suggest there is work to be done. In May,African American OSU students held a week-long sit-in at the OSU Officeof Minority Affairs to protest a proposed restructuring in thatoffice's administration. Some protest leaders urged incoming Blackfreshmen to reconsider their choice of Ohio State. The protest endedafter the university agreed to delay the restructuring so that studentsmight play a role in developing it.