Since childhood Frances Clark wanted to be a nurse. When she graduated from Forest Lake Academy, there seemed to be no way for her to attend college. Then financial help was offered on the condition that she take teacher training. She accepted the offer, thinking that she would change to nursing later. After a year and a summer of college, Frances arrived at her first teaching job three days before her nineteenth birthday. Some of the students in this one-teacher school were just three years younger than she was.

After teaching a year or so, she found that she loved it and felt that God had guided her into that profession. Frances Clark is a product of Christian education and a graduate of Southern Adventist University and the University of Maryland. She taught in church schools for 20 years, first in Florida and later in Maryland. She served as an elementary supervisor in Michigan for eight years, and in the Southwestern Union for five years before becoming Director of Education. Miss Clark was the first woman in the North American Division to be elected Union Director of Education. Frances served on both local and North American Division education committees and boards for establishing policy and preparing and approving classroom materials. She was a trustee of Southwestern Adventist University for more than 11 years. In the fall of 1990, she received the highest award the denomination offers education employees, the Award of Excellence. After forty-three-and-a-half years of education work, Miss Clark retired in 1991.

Scholarship award requirements

The Frances I. Clark Scholarship is awarded to education majors who have heard and accepted God's call to the teaching ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Recipients will be chosen based on academic achievement and financial need.

Student Recipients 

2020-2021-Yesenia Santos 

2019-2020 -Carmen Amigon

2018-2019 -Stephanie Weidman

2017-2018 -Andrew Nelson

2016-2017 -Richard Stowell

2015-2016 - Robert Aguilar, Joanna Collins

2014-2015 - Joanna Collins, Robert Collins

2013-2014 - Joanna Collins

2012-2013 - Karen Ortiz

2011-2012 - Rosalynn Santos

2010-2011 - Mary Holway

2009-2010- Sabina Mauricio

2008-2009 - Sabina Mauricio

2007-2008 - Valerie Ray , Shelly Small

2006-2007 - Alexis Rivera