A University of Texas nursing dean who specializes in women's health issues was named yesterday as dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing.

Janet D. Allan, vice chair of a national task force that recently issued new recommendations for mammography screening, will replace Barbara R. Heller on Aug. 1 as head of Maryland's nursing school.

Allan, 59, has been dean for almost five years of the Health Science Center at San Antonio, the largest of nine schools of nursing in the University of Texas system.

There, she helped to more than double the amount of federal funding for research, according to a university press release.

"We are very pleased to have a person of the national reputation of Karen bring her leadership to our campus," said David J. Ramsay, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore, who tapped Allan.

Heller, who has been University of Maryland nursing dean for almost 12 years, is resigning to head a new UM effort to recruit nurses and health care professionals.

Allan, who earned her nursing degree from Skidmore College and a Ph.D. in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, was professor of nursing at UT-Austin from 1986 to 1997. Before that, she was a staff nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a visiting nurse in San Francisco.

She said she was attracted to the University of Maryland because of its services for the poor, research and ranking among the top 10 nursing schools by U.S. News and World Report.