Prominent Biologist From Purdue Named Dean of UCI School

L. Dennis Smith, a nationally prominent developmental biologist who heads the department of biological sciences at Purdue University in Indiana, will be the new dean of biological sciences at UC Irvine.

Smith earlier this month was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in biological science study. He will complete that study before assuming the new position at UCI in the spring of 1988.

Biological sciences have more students than any other field of study at UCI--about 3,300--and are by far the largest single major on the Irvine campus.

Smith, 45, will succeed Grover Stephens, who stepped down as dean last July and will return to the position of professor. Albert Bennett has been acting dean since last July and will continue in that post until Smith’s arrival next spring. UCI officials said Thursday that Smith’s appointment is expected to be approved at the next meeting of the UC Board of Regents. That board also will establish the new dean’s salary, officials said.

A native of Muncie, Ind., Smith received his doctorate in experimental embryology in 1963 from Indiana University, where he was a research associate until 1964. He then joined the staff of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., where he remained until joining the faculty at Purdue in 1969.

Smith was promoted to associate head of the biology department there in 1979 and a year later was named department head.

He and his wife, Susie, have two children, Lauren Kay and Raymond Bradley.