[3] A University of Michigan faculty member beginning in 1965, D'Arms served as chair of the Department of Classical Studies for nine years, and was named the Gerald F. Else Professor in 1983.
D'Arms was appointed as dean of the graduate school in 1985 and he also served as vice provost for academic affairs in 1990–95.
D'Arms went on to complete a Ph.D. in classical philology at Harvard University in 1965 with a dissertation entitled Republican Roman Villas in Coastal Campania.
His works include Romans on the Bay of Naples (1970),[9] Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (1981), and more than sixty scholarly articles and reviews.
At the time of his death, he was working on a study of the social and cultural conventions concerning food and drink in Roman society.