A VISION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After a knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us -- to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
The Buried Life
Matthew Arnold (1822-1883)
FORMING THE WHOLE PERSON
Established in 2019, the Bur Oak Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit educational foundation dedicated to serving the academic community of the University of Michigan.
We appreciate that higher education should not simply seek to train persons with
outstanding expertise in particular, isolated professional disciplines. Rather, the university experience should provide students with opportunities to ask deep questions of meaning and existence, which seem to be increasingly overlooked in contemporary academia.
We support intellectual life on campus by encouraging scholarship which explores questions of universal human concern that cut across the boundaries of academic disciplines. Throughout the year, we seek to promote a range of programming for Michigan students and faculty, including reading groups, seminars and workshops, lectures and conversations with and among faculty.
The name of the Foundation refers to the legacy tree - a 200 year old Bur Oak - that was preserved and re-planted during the recent construction of the Ross School of Business. The account of the tree's preservation serves as an apt metaphor for the ideals inspiring our Foundation: to engage contemporary thought in today's academic environment with time-tested intellectual values in a spirit of friendship, collegiality and intellectual rigor.