I am a paleontologist. If you told that to 5-year-old me, I would have confidently told you that I had won at life. I have lived and traveled all across the United States, England, China, and soon, Slovakia while pursuing a career that statistically should have never worked. And for as much personal and professional success I have had in the field of paleontology, I confidently and proudly trace my origin of success to one place: the Sternberg Museum of Natural History.
If it were not for the materials available through the museum and the patient advising I received through it as a master’s student at FHSU, I would absolutely not be where I am today professionally. And I am not a one-off success story for the Sternberg. Right now, I have group chats on my phone that are titled “FHSU mafia” from a cohort of former FHSU geosciences graduate students that represent paleontology monitors, people that have worked for the National Parks Service, researchers and others who now manage their own collections or labs in different museums. Like myself, all of them owe their current positions and professional trajectory to our shared time (and graduate student struggles) at the museum and FHSU.
I could drone on and on about the academic and scientific importance of the Sternberg, but I want to discuss something else that will now be missing in the Hays community: opportunity. Originally, I am from a rural town in Alabama of about 1,800 people. Growing up, I had to travel 70 miles in any direction to find a good museum, so I am painfully aware of the struggle western Kansas now faces for curious children of any age.
If you wanted to be a natural scientist when you “grew up," a museum was a godsend and was often your only avenue into a difficult to access field of study. Regardless of whether you have dreams of becoming a specialist one day or if you are simply enthusiastic about attending a museum for its fun, educational atmosphere, museums provide an opportunity for people of all ages to meet, learn and engage with the world and community around them.
Without ready access to a world class museum like the Sternberg, the curious and the dreamers of western Kansas have one less place to mold their interests. Even if you are not a child at heart, the Sternberg attracted people that were passing through western Kansas. You cannot miss the signs that draw attention to stopping at Hays and the Sternberg for miles in any direction on I-70. With this gaping hole left by the closing of the museum, Hays is now devoid of tourist opportunity, educational opportunity and community-oriented opportunity.
I graduated FHSU almost 10 years ago and I have been in the game long enough to know that funding cuts happen. I am not naive enough to think that this would have had a simple solution. But where were the outwardly facing indicators that a popular institution was in trouble?
Funding cuts to the arts and sciences are a dime a dozen in 2026, so this is a hard and not uncommon problem to surmount. But where was the discussion about any of this with the community?
If the Sternberg was not managed in part by the community, would a meeting between FHSU and the local Hays community not have offered avenues to circumvent closure?
Furthermore, it is easy to place blame or point fingers once we have reached the point we find ourselves in today. Perhaps it was a singular decision of a college president; administrative board of some description; or legislative process that led the university to making “hard financial decisions."
Maybe it was a mix of people and short-sighted ideas. Either way, it does not matter. At the end of the day, the Hays community, Ellis County, state of Kansas and the public at large deserve better than the decisions that were made for them in terminating educational opportunities. You all deserve better than this.
—J. Logan King, Ph.D.,
curator of Paleontology at Colorado Northwestern Community College