7. Dr. Carol Pearson, Director, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, U. of Maryland, College Park

Charles Burack is an extremely gifted teacher.  In his course on Work Visions, student after student made breakthrough discoveries about who they are and what they wanted to do. Chuck provided a good, grounded scholarly context for what we were doing and why, promoted deep sharing, and led focusing exercises and meditations that helped people assess their deeper wisdom.  And with all this, he balanced a relaxed and congenial atmosphere of collegiality with being thoroughly in charge and effective as a teacher.

8. Leslie Kanberg, Director, International Programs, UC Berkeley, Extension

It is my pleasure to recommend Dr. Chuck Burack to you and your organization.   As someone who spends a great deal of time watching excellent instructors in action, I can attest to Chuck’s considerable pedagogic talents. Moreover, Chuck is a wealth of information and knowledge, which he shares with contagious enthusiasm.  In his classroom, Chuck quickly establishes a rapport with the students and manages to provoke both thinking and conversation.  He offers a wonderful balance between practice and processing, allowing learners to discover and connect with the subject matter.  Best of all, one learns a lot in Chuck’s classroom.

Having had the recent good fortune of attending Chuck’s “The Art and Science of Creativity” class, I would be delighted to tell you more about why I think Chuck has made so many contributions to the quality of courses offered at UC Berkeley Extension.  Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can tell you more about Chuck Burack.

9. Dr. Marlene DeNardo, Co-Chair, Master of Liberal Arts Program, Naropa University, Oakland

Chuck is a born teacher.  He loves to teach and has exceptional teaching talents.  Chuck literally overflows with enthusiasm for the subjects he teaches, and his excitement generates an electricity that inspires students to delve more deeply into the course materials and into themselves.  His passion for ideas and people is combined with a gentle, friendly manner that encourages students to participate.  Students respond as much to Chuck’s caring heart as to his brilliant mind.  He is also a fine storyteller with a delightful sense of humor.

Chuck consistently receives outstanding student evaluations for his literature, writing and creativity courses.  Students also find his Reinvention of Work courses to be stimulating, informative, and transformational.   Chuck has a real talent for finding ways to help students with very different work histories take a new look at the work world and their own work situations.  Like an orchestra conductor, he weaves together students’ contributions.  He also regularly divides up the class into small groups so that more in-depth conversations can take place.  Chuck also makes use of contemplative exercises that open students to their creativity and insight.  His general approach is to stimulate both intuitive and discursive capabilities so that students can more effectively see, think about, and reinvent their work.

As a masterful writing coach, Chuck has helped students develop and revise their course papers and Master’s theses.  Other faculty members will refer their more challenging students to Chuck for additional writing coaching.  Chuck has helped numerous students who for months were confused and anxious about how to proceed on their Master’s projects.  After meeting with Chuck, they quickly gain a new sense of clarity and purpose as well as new tools for refining their projects.  He shows students how to turn vague ideas into a clear thesis statement, strong supporting points, and a well-organized outline.  Many return to him to get additional feedback on their chapters.

10. Dr. Ana Perez-Chisti, Professor & Counselor, Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto

Chuck and I have co-taught courses at Naropa University, Oakland.  What I find so incredibly impressive about Chuck’s teaching is that he not only worked with me in a very open and generous manner but participated with me in a unique way that allowed synthesis to become clearer for the students.  He is excellent at articulating the essence of the subject matter and brings great clarity to it.  His teaching methodology encourages the students to participate actively in the process.  His approach is generous and open and invites genuine dialogue.  He is aware of where students are at and stays at the level they are grappling with.  He doesn’t run ahead of students like a fast racing horse but stays close to them.  This is a compassionate and new way of teaching.  He finds a way to bring students up in proximity to the information being presented.

As a speaker, Chuck has great communication skills.  He is often entertaining, tells great stories, links his stories with the subject matter (that is well researched), and gives great references.  When he speaks, he comes through as a genuinely entertaining, honest, sincere person.  He brings people to the capacity that they too can do it.  He is an every man’s person.  He makes his knowledge accessible and approachable.  For an inspirational teacher, this is essential.   Everything Chuck teaches he researches exquisitely well.  His opinions are based on well-researched documentation.  He has a profound ability to bring academic research into synthesis with his own ideas and to relate information from this perspective. 

Chuck is generous in guiding students to manifest and articulate in writing what is in their imaginations.  He does this in a very relaxed and artistically creative way.  Through his seminars, workshops and advising he has a way of relaxing students around this process and lifts their capacity tremendously.

Finally, Chuck has high integrity.  He walks his talk.  He is always trying to improve himself and his relationship with his fellow beings.  When he teaches ethics, it is clear that he is ethical.  When he teaches transformative practices, it is clear he does them.  This is a quality that institutions would be wise to honor.

11. Ramu Nagappan, Ph.D., Program Director, Humanities and Languages, UC Berkeley Extension

I highly recommend Dr. Chuck Burack’s productive and engaging workshop, “Creative Power at Work.” My fellow program directors at UC Berkeley Extension found the presentation to be rewarding and applicable to our short- and long-term plans for curricular development. He was an effective communicator, and was skilled at making the group feel comfortable. The core principles Dr. Burack described will promote better collaboration among our staff. We also appreciated the very thorough follow-up materials he sent after the session.  I would recommend the creativity workshop to organizations of all kinds. Dr. Burack showed us how reflection on the creative process is an essential part of professional development.

 12.  Dr. John Jerry-Anthony Parente, Professor and Artist, Chabot College, Hayward, CA

Chuck is an exceptional teacher, passionate about learning, and able to engage his students in the material at a very deep level.  He creates an atmosphere of discovery in the classroom where students explore their personal relationship to the material.  It is exciting to see students realize, with Chuck’s guidance, that they do understand poetry, can relate to literature, and are able to write well.  He encourages participation, relating students’ experiences to the material studied, and students radiate pride as they find their voice.

Chuck is an active scholar, which complements what he brings to the classroom.  The author of a number of articles and an advisory board member of Tikkun magazine, Chuck’s scholarship is interdisciplinary and profound in range.  He is equally successful in probing literature, writing, religious consciousness, work, and psychology with his students.  He is exceptionally gifted at helping fearful adults realize that they can write, move beyond their blocks, and enjoy the process.   I only have high praise for Chuck – as a person, teacher, advisor, mentor, group facilitator, scholar, and fellow faculty member.

13.  Dr. James Ryan, Vice President, Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco

Dr. Burack’s public talk [on creativity] at our organization (Cultural Integration Fellowship) was met with great enthusiasm by our audience.  We regularly record our talks for sale, but it is rare that we get a demand for tapes as we had with Dr. Burack’s talk.  He is a gifted and sensitive speaker who can communicate with both the academic and non-academic audience.  We highly recommend him as a speaker.