As a little boy living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon thought everyone lived in a forest, hunted, fished, picked berries, and shoveled snow, lots of snow. Jon has lived in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, and New York, plus the Canadian province of Alberta.
Jon has been teaching in academia since 1976— it just means he is old, having taught over 2,000 students. Since the age of six years old he desired to be a professor, and since the age of 17 a professor in landscape architecture. By 2002, Dr. Burley has had the opportunity to work with many international colleagues, including friends from France, China, Japan, Portugal, Philippines, Turkey, and Russia. Thirty visiting scholars have worked with Jon at MSU and many others have come for a visit and to give a lecture. Most have published research with Jon. Dr. Burley has given lectures, workshops, and seminars at about 35 universities around the world and has visited 49 countries, plus given many presentations at conferences across the globe. He has over 1200 sketches from many of the places he has visited, created over 200 oil paintings, has written and had published nearly 400 papers and abstracts, worked with about 70 graduate students in environmental design/landscape architecture, construction management, urban planning, interior design, and recreation science (10 Ph.Ds in anthropology, recreation science, geography, natural resources, and environmental design) has over 6,000 books in his personal library, owns 9 guitars, and works in one garden filled with magnolia trees, hardy azaleas, dwarf evergreens, pollinator plants, and habitat for wildlife. He has earned a combined 15 ASLA and AIA awards. As you might guess, he is rather independent, pluralistic, and egalitarian plus containing a blend both conservative and liberal streaks, being almost uncategorical and undefinable. He is known as a gentleman American Qowat Milat, defender of insignificant and little known lost causes that others would chose not to pursue. He definitely choses the road less travelled. According to GoogleScholar he is one of the top 50 cited landscape architecture scholars in the world, with many of his published works in visual quality social science, and reclamation natural resource science.
Jon has his second book published (Cognella is the publisher) with Dr. Trisha Machemer as a substantial co-author and with contributions by many other colleagues. The title is From Eye to Heart: Exterior Spaces Explored and Explained. The book contains many drawings, paintings, and very short autobiographical stories and observations to help students learn about the environment. In 2016, it earned a Michigan Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects
Honor Award for Communication.
Dr. Burley retired from Michigan State University in 2021. He still writes and publishes, works with graduate students, plays guitar, and tends his garden.
(left) Dr. Burley in Detroit, Michigan, 2019