Entomology and Plant Pathology

Our Faculty

Dr. Frank Hale, Professor

The University of Tennessee Soil, Plant and Pest Center 5201 Marchant Drive Nashville, TN 37211-5112 Phone: 615-835-4571; Fax: 615-781-2568 Email: fahale@utk.edu Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

Professional Interest: Hale is Professor for the University of Tennessee Extension with statewide Extension responsibilities since 1992 for entomology of horticultural crops [turf (sports turf, sod, golf course and landscape), ornamentals (landscape, nursery, greenhouse and interiorscape), fruit (small fruit and tree fruit), vegetables (greenhouse and field grown)] and dark type tobacco. These high value crop areas are composed of hundreds of different cultivars, each with their own pest complex, that require a high level of expertise to manage. The rapid growth in the horticultural industry, especially in landscape management, requires a major educational outreach.

Areas of Interest & Accomplishments: As an Extension entomologist for most of his career, Hale has emphasized the delivery of effective IPM programs. Recent activities include a fruit pest news web site and a multi-media approach to in-depth, hands on pest identification workshops utilizing insect specimens, dissecting microscopes, a document camera and PowerPoint presentations. Research activities include management of Nantucket pine tip moth in Christmas trees; a maple shoot borer, Proteoteras aesculana, in maple; ambrosia beetle in landscape and nursery settings; flatheaded appletree borer and other wood-boring insects in the landscape; woolly apple aphid on crabapples; and tobacco aphids on dark type tobacco, obsure scale on ooli, and oak econuim scale..

Leadership Roles: Hale is an active member of the ESA and the Tennessee Entomological Society. In ESA, he has served as Co-Chair, Local Arrangements Committee for the Annual Meeting of the ESA in Nashville (1997). He has served the Southeastern Branch ESA as a member of the Resolutions Committee and Co-Chair of the Vegetable Insect Symposium (1998). Hale will serve as president of the Southeast Branch ESA for 2010 - 2011. Hale has served on various committees of the Tennessee Entomological Society, is a past President and is currently Society Historian. Hale is active in the Southern Nursery Association Research Conference where he has served as Chairman/Editor and Moderator of the Entomology Section (1996-1998).

Links

• Extension Work
• Publications
• Vitae