FACILITIES & CAMPUS LIFE

A Showcase for Intellect

UVM has always been a place where intellectual stimulation is the coin of the realm, with numerous opportunities to explore new ideas and areas of inquiry through open lectures and appearances by noted authors and scholars across the academic disciplines.

Those opportunities come even more frequently today through the Dan and Carole Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings to campus distinguished guest speakers who are among the most esteemed thinkers, writers, and scholars in their fields.

Open to the entire University community and the public at large, the program has brought more than fifty distinguished speakers to campus since its inception. To offer only a few examples, members of the UVM community have had an opportunity to take in:

• a poetry reading by three-time American Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky
• a presentation on "Europe, America and the Global Economy" by Jeremy Rifkin, Fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
• a talk by Dr. William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, on "The Roots of Racial Tensions: Urban Ethnic Neighborhoods"
• a lecture on "Solving Equations" by Andrew Wiles, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, one of the greatest mathematicians of our time.

Initially funded by discretionary gift funds when it was established by President Daniel Mark Fogel in the fall of 2002, the series received permanent funding with a generous gift to The Campaign for the University of Vermont by alumnus Dan Burack '55, and his wife Carole, which they designated to endow the lecture series and to support undergraduate scholarships. The University renamed the series in the Buracks' honor to recognize their philanthropy.