Smith joined the faculty at Yale in 1947 as an instructor, after earning his master's degree. He was named an assistant professor in 1951, associate professor in 1957, and full professor in 1963. He assumed the Morris K. Jesup chair of silviculture in 1967. He served as an assistant dean of the School of Forestry from 1953 to 1958. Yale appointed him the Director of School Forests in 1954. Smith advanced the idea of analyzing a forest through reconstruction of its history, coupled with projection of its likely future. This study became known as forest stand dynamics. In his field trips and teaching, Smith showed students how a practical knowledge of botany, ecology, and geology could allow a forester to look at a stand of trees, pick out clues, and make deductions about the forces shaping the forest. His skills in this area led some students to dub him a
Sherlock Holmes of the forest. He argued that the monocultures often seen in plantation forestry were not always economically ideal. He observed that the canopies of multi-species forests often develop into layers consisting of different species, even if the trees are all the same age. Careful management can take advantage of this layering and increase the quality and quantity of resources that the forest can produce. Smith's mentor at the Yale School of Forestry, Professor Ralph Chipman Hawley, had written a text,
The Practice of Silviculture, first published in 1921. Smith assisted Hawley in updating the text for the sixth edition in 1954 and became its junior author. He was the sole author of the seventh (1961) and eighth (1986) editions. Following Hawley's example, Smith took on junior authors for the ninth edition (1997). At the time of Smith's death, the Yale University public affairs office called the book the most widely used forestry text in the world. == Public Service ==