Few UC Davis professors know firsthand what it's like to be an undergraduate on the campus. But evolutionary anthropologist Henry McHenry does. He remembers sitting in 198 Young Hall -- in which he now teaches -- and experiencing what he calls a "moment of enchantment." McHenry had just learned about the chemistry of the cell. Such inspiring moments recurred during his UC Davis college years, prompting him to pursue his Ph.D. at Harvard. McHenry describes those faculty members who sparked his career as excellent scholars and teachers, who shared their knowledge with great enthusiasm. Today, those same qualities in McHenry -- a UC Davis professor himself now for nearly 30 years -- prompted the UC Davis Foundation to award him this year's UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement. Announced during McHenry's human evolution class this afternoon, the $30,000 prize will be given to him officially May 25. Established in 1988, the prize distinguishes the campus as a place where undergraduate students matter, says Norm Weil, UC Davis Foundation chair. "I'm proud this remains the largest cash award for teaching and scholarly achievement in the country. It is a pleasure to see the prize awarded to Professor McHenry." UC Davis Chancellor Larry N. Vanderhoef commended the selection of McHenry. "Inspired as a UC Davis student, inspiring as a UC Davis professor, a renowned UC Davis scholar, Henry is a winner in many ways. We're delighted to enhance that reputation with this prize." Colleagues and students praise McHenry for his vision of the ideal anthropology education, for inspiring students to hone their intellectual curiosity, for the empathy he, a UC Davis alum, feels for his students, and for linking his prolific and high-profile research to the classroom. "The way Henry McHenry's classes are structured, he takes his students through the research experience," said Steven M. Sheffrin, dean of the Division of Social Sciences. For example, while introductory evolutionary biology courses typically cover the topic of fossil evidence, McHenry and the anthropology department provide a top-notch fossil cast collection -- just for student use, Sheffrin says, so that McHenry's Anthro 1 students may examine actual specimens. McHenry's "delight in the research experience makes it impossible for him not to want to carry that kind of experience into the classroom to students he thinks will also be delighted. They always are," says Bob Bettinger, anthropology department chair. McHenry has a reputation for rigorous and insightful teaching, but also for making his classes entertaining when appropriate. He is known for his well-tuned sense of humor as well as his equally well-tuned guitar. "Though quiet and calm when you speak to him out of class, during lectures he is obviously brimming with enthusiasm," says Jackie Eng, a recent UC Davis graduate who lives in San Francisco. "He loves what he does, he loves to spread knowledge about anthropology and he loves life. How many other professors serenade their students with a song about Homo habilis that is both funny and educational?" Just as McHenry found himself drawn to anthropology as a UC Davis student, so, too, he has influenced his students the same way. "When I came to UC Davis, I planned to be an electrical engineer," said Sandra Inouye, who teaches anatomy in Illinois. "My first quarter I took an elective, anthropology, taught by McHenry. ... I fell in love with the class. ... Eventually, I became an anthropology major, the best decision I ever made in college." McHenry's enthusiasm and humor warmed up the classroom on a recent chilly afternoon. Smiling, McHenry gestured toward his face as he talked about the "big, beady eyes, prominent brow and receding headline" of hominids during the middle Pleistocene period, 780,000 to 128,000,000 years ago. As he showed slides, McHenry warned students of a particularly ugly specimen next -- it turned out to be a slide of himself examining a fossilized skull. The class laughed. But while McHenry makes teaching seem like second nature, it is not. Or at least was not when he started. Though he grew up in an academic home -- his father was the founding chancellor of UC Santa Cruz -- and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from UC Davis, McHenry found speaking in large lecture halls unnatural. "I tend to have a lot of nervousness about it, so to overcome that, I prepare carefully," he says, explaining a habit formed to conquer early jittery teaching experiences. "So I started coming in early in the morning and practicing in an empty lecture hall. I'd write on the board and make sure it was legible." For the past 15 years, he's practiced meditation, which provided a side benefit -- an easing of his classroom anxiety. "It's helpful in mindfulness, awareness and developing empathy toward yourself and toward others. It has influenced my teaching through attitude and an upliftedness that's very helpful when in front of a large class. As is taught in meditation, you have a strong back, so you have your strength, but you have a soft front, an open heart. That's been helpful." Through his hard work and meditation, McHenry says teaching became "positive and energizing" and even, he says, more enjoyable day-to-day than his actual research work. Writing papers, he says, "can be tedious." McHenry is known internationally for his scholarship on comparative relationships among primate fossils housed in museums in Africa; his findings have been featured in Science, The New York Times, Discover, National Geographic and numerous scholarly journals, and he is frequently asked to give talks globally. McHenry's work, notes Sheffrin, reveals similarities shared between separate hominid species that were not due to common ancestry but evolved independently, apparently in response to similar feeding adaptations. McHenry says his research enriches his teaching, and yet, the reverse is also true -- his teaching enhances his research work. "I'm so lucky to be in the field I'm in. I do research on the minutiae of fossil anatomy. Then, in the classroom, I place my research into the context of the bigger questions of evolutionary research discovery. I'm standing in front of students explaining how it fits together in a big picture, only later to find myself in a museum, fussing over details. I'm more aware of the bigger questions when I'm teaching, and that carries over to my research," McHenry said. One of the most time-consuming and creative aspects of transferring his vast research knowledge into the classroom is choosing what information to share with students, he says. "Facts are easy to come by, with the Web. We're overloaded with information. The key is the careful selection of what to say and how to relate it to the bigger questions." McHenry says he is fortunate to teach a subject -- evolutionary anthropology -- that is inherently interesting to students. "It looks at our place in the universe, our origins. It's not hard to spark interest to keep alive a curiosity to last all of their lives. So when a newspaper, magazine or television special occurs on this subject, students still have an insight into it, a curiosity, which is the ideal of a liberal arts education -- expanding the mind. Only a small fraction of my students will go on to a career in anthropology." McHenry has at the ready a Henry Adams quote about teaching, which he reads aloud. "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell when his influence stops." "The rewards of teaching are tremendous. Students go on and live their lives, I hear from them. I've been around so long, the students come back. Remember, I started teaching in the Pleistocene!" McHenry said, his characteristic humor well intact. Media contacts: -- Henry McHenry, Anthropology, (530) 752-1588, hmmchenry@ucdavis.edu -- Lisa Klionsky, News Service, (530) 752-9841, lrklionsky@ucdavis.edu