Distinguished Professor Joanna Burger pictured with an egret during a field study in New Jersey. Photo: Courtesy of Joanna Burger.
The Rutgers University Board of Governors (BOG) voted today, June 17, to establish the Joanna Burger Endowed Legacy Professorship to support faculty in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources who are advancing the study of behavioral ecology in innovative and impactful ways.
This legacy professorship is the first for the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS). Legacy professorships, approved by the BOG in 2020, enable current, emeritus and retired faculty and their families to create an endowed professorship that pays tribute to their legacy.
For more than five decades, Burger has been a pioneering force in the field of behavioral ecology at Rutgers University. From her early post-doctoral work studying brown-hooded gulls in the remote pampas of Argentina to long-term field studies across New Jersey, her career has been defined by fearless exploration, scientific rigor and a deep commitment to understanding the natural world.
Now, her extraordinary legacy will live on through the Joanna Burger Endowed Legacy Professorship housed within SEBS.
“When I came to Rutgers in the early 1970s, there were few women in the sciences,” Burger recalled. “But I found a home here—an academic environment where I could teach, publish and follow the science wherever it led.”
That journey led her into marshes, bays and forests to study species ranging from fiddler crabs and pine snakes to migratory shorebirds and diamondback terrapins. Her fieldwork, often initiated with minimal funding and maximum curiosity, grew into some of the longest-running ecological studies in the country.
The Joanna Burger Endowed Legacy Professorship will provide support to faculty working in behavioral ecology—support that Burger knows from experience can be transformative.
“Understanding animal behavior is essential to conservation, management, and our broader coexistence with wildlife,” she said. “This professorship is about enabling research that might be a bit off the beaten path, or too new to attract traditional funding—but that has the potential to lead to important scientific breakthroughs.”
Equally important, the professorship brings recognition and visibility to the work of behavioral ecologists at Rutgers.
“Rutgers is a large institution, and it’s easy for individual disciplines to become siloed across campuses and departments,” Burger noted. “This can spotlight important work, foster connection among researchers, and build a stronger sense of academic community.”
Her generosity in establishing this endowment reflects a lifelong commitment to giving back—to the university that nurtured her career, to the students she mentored and to the future of science driven by curiosity and compassion.
Burger’s passion for behavioral ecology began early. Growing up on a farm, she spent her childhood tracking bird nests among the zucchini plants, watching gulls follow her father’s plow, and learning from her parents to appreciate both wildlife and wildflowers.
“Farm life taught me that you must care for the land and the creatures that live on it—and that hard work, when driven by passion, leads to both success and joy,” she said.
That ethic has defined her decades at Rutgers. As a researcher, mentor and trailblazer, Burger has inspired countless students and colleagues. With the establishment of the Joanna Burger Endowed Legacy Professorship, her influence will extend far into the future—supporting faculty who are driven to ask bold questions, pursue meaningful discoveries and shape the field of behavioral ecology for generations to come.
