No. 2 Administrator at UCI Is Named Acting Chancellor : Education: Biologist L. Dennis Smith will fill in until successor to Jack W. Peltason is found. Campus insiders say the appointment doesn’t necessarily give Smith the inside track for the permanent job.

UC Irvine’s No. 2 administrator, cell biologist L. Dennis Smith, was named Friday to serve as acting chancellor beginning Oct. 1.

Smith, who has been UCI’s executive vice chancellor since the summer of 1990, will take on the added duties when Chancellor Jack W. Peltason leaves to become president of the University of California.

The University of California Board of Regents unanimously approved Smith’s six-month appointment Friday while they conduct a nationwide search for a successor to Peltason.

Under terms of the appointment, Smith will serve as acting chancellor through March 31, or until a new chancellor is chosen, if that occurs sooner. Smith said he expects to be considered among the potential candidates for the job, as are all vice chancellors throughout the nine-campus UC system.

Regents also awarded Smith a stipend of $19,000 above his annual salary of $143,000, in anticipation of the extra duties he will assume as acting chancellor, UC spokesman Ron Kolb said.

Faculty and campus administrators expressed apprehension that Smith’s duties as both chancellor and executive officer would wear him out, since there would be no one appointed acting executive vice chancellor.

“It will mean I’ll have a very busy schedule,” conceded Smith, 54, who came to UCI in 1988 as dean of biological sciences after 18 years on the faculty of Purdue University in Indiana. But Smith said he is already meeting with vice chancellors and other campus officials to discuss delegating many of his duties on the 17,000-student campus.

The big challenge, Smith said, will be to try to keep up morale and educational quality as the university prepares to slash about $15 million from its $150-million operating budget. Already, the university has laid off more than 30 people, including coaches, administrators and clerical staff. No faculty members have been laid off or are expected to face layoff.

“We have decided to make the cuts so that the degree-granting units and the people who teach courses will be affected as little as possible,” Smith said. “Our goal is to do the best job we can at education. We cannot sacrifice quality at that level, or the quality of the faculty.”

The acting chancellor title is not expected to give Smith an inside track on the permanent job, campus insiders say. In fact, they say that the message in appointing him is that the regents intend to do a thorough search.

A 16-member search committee, chaired by Peltason, is expected to review a list of potential candidates later this summer, and forward those names to a separate faculty screening committee.

A frequently mentioned contender is UCI psychobiologist James L. McGaugh, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences who previously served as executive vice chancellor and is credited with modernizing UCI Medical Center in Orange.

McGaugh, director of UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, is said not to be interested in the job, as is reportedly the case with UCI German-language professor William J. Lillyman, another former executive vice chancellor widely regarded as among those in the running.

UCI microbiologist Paul S. Sypherd, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, is another potential candidate who is popular with campus insiders. Others expected to be on the list of contenders are former UCI chemistry Chairman Marjorie C. Caserio, now a vice chancellor for academic affairs at UC San Diego, and historian Stanley Chodorow, dean of arts and humanities at the San Diego campus.

The search committee is expected to forward its recommendation in late fall or early 1993.