3.30.21

Family legacy inspires Collyer and Jami Burbach to endow scholarship in WSU School of Education

A child of the Great Depression, Marvin Burbach grew up to be the kind of man exemplified by the Greatest Generation: hard-working, honest, ambitious and frugal.

“The one thing he was adamant about – no matter how hard he had to work – he was going to make sure his three sons had the ability to go to a good college,” says Collyer Burbach, Marvin’s grandson. “And it paid off. His sons collectively went on to earn two doctorates, several master’s degrees and all had very successful careers with this solid footing Marvin provided.”

Marvin and his wife, Alice, spent most of their lives teaching at all levels throughout the Midwest and spent their time between farming in western Kansas.

Teaching is a career proudly embraced by several generations of the Burbach family. Collyer’s father, Daryl, taught mathematics to middle- and high-schoolers and at the collegiate level, including at WSU. And his mother, Dr. Cindy Burbach, had a long career in public health, including teaching nursing students at Wichita State.

Two years after his grandfather’s death at age 100, Collyer Burbach and his wife, Jami, are preserving their family legacy and paying tribute to the power of education by endowing the Burbach Family Education Scholarship. Their gift of $100,000 will help WSU students who have financial needs to become tomorrow’s educators.

Their family’s legacy was one inspiration for the couple’s gift – to show how much they value education and teachers. Another was to make an impact in a discipline that doesn’t always draw the same scholarship support as other academic fields like engineering and business.

“We want recipients of this scholarship to know that others see the value in education, even though the financial backing isn’t always there for scholarships,” says Jami Burbach, a 2005 WSU graduate in elementary education. Now teaching for the Valley Center school district, she is in her 15th year as a classroom teacher. Jami marks the third generation of teaching in the Burbach family.

“There has been a very strong connection in our family to education in general and Wichita State, specifically,” says Collyer Burbach, a customer service manager for Airbus Americas who attended WSU for aeronautical engineering and now works in the Airbus facility on the WSU Innovation Campus.

The couple, in their late 30s, are on the younger side of the philanthropic spectrum. Most donors making major gifts are typically in their 50s, 60s and older. But the Burbaches felt an urgency they hope other donors will recognize, too. “Obviously, with COVID and the economy, a lot of people are struggling right now, and tuition costs keep climbing,” Collyer says. “We knew that most people wait until nearer to or during retirement to make a gift like this, but fortunately, we felt like we had the ability to give now and we would encourage other younger donors to consider giving now, too.”