Rate My Professor Dennis DeVries

Dennis DeVries serves as Alumni Professor and Assistant Director for Research Programs in Auburn University's School of Fisheries, Aquaculture & Aquatic Sciences, College of Agriculture. He holds the Butler-Cunningham Eminent Scholar Chair in Agriculture and Environmental Management since 2025 and has progressed through faculty ranks at Auburn since joining as Assistant Professor in 1990, becoming Associate Professor in 1994 and Professor in 1999. DeVries also assumed the role of Assistant Director for Research Programs in 2015. He earned his BS degree from Purdue University in 1982, MS from The Ohio State University in 1985, and PhD from The Ohio State University in 1989.

DeVries' expertise centers on aquatic ecology, positioned at the interface between basic ecology—including population, community, and behavioral aspects—and applied fisheries management as well as aquatic resource conservation. His work merges research and education to address applied management issues, exploring species interactions across diverse aquatic systems such as ponds, reservoirs, streams, rivers, estuaries, and the northern Gulf of Mexico, encompassing fishes, snails, mussels, and crayfishes. He has sustained a continuously funded research program, securing more than $10 million in contracts and grants from various sources, which has yielded over 85 peer-reviewed publications and one edited book, Multidimensional Approaches to Reservoir Fisheries Management (1996, co-edited with L.E. Miranda). Prominent publications include Determination of age and growth (1996, Fisheries Techniques), First-year recruitment of largemouth bass: the interdependency of early life stages (1997, Ecological Applications), Food-web regulation by a planktivore: exploring the generality of the trophic cascade hypothesis (1995, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences), and Age and growth (2012, Fisheries Techniques, 3rd edition). DeVries has mentored 36 completed graduate students and currently advises eight others, while contributing to teaching and service at the university and in professional societies. In 2018, he received the New Alumni Professorship award.