President's Biography
Darlene Brannigan Smith, PhD
Darlene Brannigan Smith, PhD, currently serves as the interim president of Frostburg State University. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland College Park and an MBA in Finance from the University of Baltimore. She is a graduate of Harvard’s Institute for Management and Leadership in Higher Education, Leadership Maryland and the leadership program of the Greater Baltimore Committee. Darlene has been named three times to The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women in Maryland and was inducted into the Circle of Excellence
Dr. Smith had a distinguished career at the University of Baltimore – for four years as executive vice president and provost and, before that, as dean of UBalt’s highly ranked Merrick School of Business.
Dr. Smith’s priorities around learner-success shaped programs that better serve transfer and working adult students, improve persistence among first-year students and tighten connections between classroom and career. She spearheaded the University of Baltimore’s five-year strategic planning process, engaging faculty, staff, students, alumni and partners to position UBalt as the region’s premier professional, career-focused university, and to assure long-term financial stability. Dr. Smith also led the Merrick School through two successful maintenances of accreditation reviews.
Prior to her appointment at the University of Baltimore, Darlene served on the faculty at George Washington University and Loyola College in Maryland. Dr. Smith, who is a world traveler, was also a visiting professor at Peking University in Beijing, China, University Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile, and ESSEC Business School in Paris, France.
After her tenure at UBalt, Dr. Smith transitioned to the University System of Maryland (USM) where she served as interim associate vice chancellor for academic programs and, later, as special assistant to the senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. She worked with all 12 USM institutions and the three regional centers to develop and review academic programs and to guide comprehensive academic planning.
In March 2025, Dr. Smith left retirement at the request of the USM Chancellor to serve as the interim president at Frostburg while a national search for FSU’s next president is being conducted. Since assuming her role at Frostburg, Dr. Smith has worked to bolster FSU’s marketing and admissions by increasing budgets, launching new collateral materials, hiring permanent staff in the Department of Admissions and extending outreach to the community to highlight the importance of FSU as an incubator of leadership, creativity and innovation in the region.
Dr. Smith appointed a new Provost and led the reorganization of the university’s academic structure to help advance the mission while creating more marketable naming conventions and to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate continuous changes to FSU’s portfolio of programs. She was also instrumental in finalizing the necessary steps to reopen Frostburg’s Planetarium.
Dr. Smith has been married to her husband Rick for 46 years. They have two adult children and six grandchildren.
