Maureen Stanton, one of the world's most influential evolutionary ecologists and one of UC Davis' most admired professors, today was named the 2005 recipient of the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.

The $30,000 prize, funded by the UC Davis Foundation and established in 1988, is believed to be the largest prize of its kind in the nation. The winner is selected on the recommendations of faculty members, students and research peers.

When first told that she had won the award, Stanton declared herself "speechless" and her customary smile got even bigger. Recovering, she described the pleasure of spending 24 years at UC Davis immersed in her two professional passions: discovery and teaching. "Much of my career has happened because I saw something and said, 'Hmm, what's going on there?' "

In nominating Stanton for the UC Davis Prize, Phyllis Wise, the dean of the UC Davis Division of Biological Sciences, wrote, "She is one of the most lucid and enthusiastic lecturers I have ever known, and no one is better at teaching students how to think critically. At the same time, she ... [has] established a stellar research record in plant evolutionary genetics."

Michael Chapman, the chair of the UC Davis Foundation Board, said, "As dedicated supporters of higher education, the Trustees of the UC Davis Foundation take great pride in recognizing Professor Stanton's extraordinary scholarship and gifted teaching by awarding her the 2005 UC Davis Prize. As her colleagues and students can attest, she exemplifies the very best in higher education."

Maureen Stanton has had a passion for nature since her childhood. She still has the nature encyclopedias she "read endlessly" starting when she was 5 years old, enchanted by the diversity of creatures and plants in the world. Growing up on the woody fringe of Houston, she spent her days absorbed in digging holes, turning over logs and catching bugs and snakes. She was encouraged by her father, Jack Stanton, an oil-field engineer fascinated by unexplained and unconfirmed phenomena such as UFOs and ESP.

"I owe my dad a lot. Because of him I'm a scientist," Stanton said. "He showed me that our knowledge of the world is incredibly superficial. It was natural for me to ask lots of questions -- and to become a person who is involved in finding the answers."

Known as simply Mau (pronounced Mo), young Maureen began her research career while only a sophomore at Stanford University. It did not take her long to find the area that would become her career focus: the interactions between plants and insects. At Stanford she explored the reasons why female butterflies chose to lay eggs on certain plants and not others. With a bachelor's degree in biology she went to Harvard University, expanded on her plant-herbivore studies, and earned her Ph.D. in five years. And then -- academic burnout.

For a break, Stanton took a position at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, teaching science to first- through fourth-graders -- the next generation of hole-diggers and snake-catchers. "I learned a great deal there about teaching," she said. "But I really missed the discovery end of science."

She went back to academia -- Yale this time -- for post-doctoral research on the role that the reproductive success of individual plants plays in the evolution of their species. Her subsequent discoveries about the unappreciated importance of male characteristics in flowers launched her into the top ranks of evolutionary ecologists.

In 1982, she joined the UC Davis faculty as an assistant professor of botany. She was 28 -- younger than many of her doctoral students.

Twenty-three years later, "Professor Stanton is a wonderful combination of inspired teacher and stellar researcher," said UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef. "She brings extraordinary depth and clarity of insight to her classroom and to her field. She effectively engages her students in the actual practice of scientific discovery and inspires them to levels of accomplishment they initially believe beyond their grasp."

Stanton's contributions to the quality of research and teaching at UC Davis extend beyond her own lab and classrooms. In his letter nominating Stanton for the UC Davis Prize, Michael Turelli, the chair of the Department of Evolution and Ecology, said "Professor Stanton has made phenomenal contributions to university service at all levels." In July she will succeed Turelli as department chair. She served as the "dynamic and extraordinarily productive" director of the Center for Population Biology from 1993 to 1998. She frequently serves as an adviser to National Science Foundation panels, and has been a national council member of the Society for the Study of Evolution and vice president of the American Society of Naturalists. She is an elected fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

Despite these accomplishments, Stanton insists she has not yet matured as a researcher or teacher. In scholarship -- although she calls herself "basically a low-tech person, a bags-flags-and-tags gal" -- she is currently beginning a high-tech pursuit of the genetic basis of differences in shape and habitat between two races of a small native California plant. In teaching, she continually reshapes course curricula to inspire the same questions in her students that her father inspired in her.

"I want to build critical thinking skills," she said. "That means I have to teach them to question pre-conceived ideas -- to ask, 'How confident are we of what we think we know?' "

The only problem with teaching students to be active skeptics, she reflected, is that in science, "You answer two questions and you generate 47."

Stanton's award was announced on campus today at the final winter-quarter meeting of her upper-division class on field ecology. The 2005 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement will be formally presented to her on Thursday, May 26, at a gala dinner in her honor at Freeborn Hall.