news story / By Bob Doran

Museum at the Crossroads

Dreams of SpongeBob buoy the spirits of Natural History Museum supporters

(Aug. 20, 2009)  When Humboldt State University announced on Aug. 9 that it would soon shutter its Natural History Museum in Northtown Arcata, supporters of the museum quickly mobilized to save the popular institution for science education. They’ve been meeting often, and are currently scrambling to raise funds in advance of the university’s shut-off date.

Ironically, though, the trigger (or the excuse) for the university’s closure of the museum might have come from the institution’s own director, who asked HSU for increased funding during one of the most severe budget crises in California history.

NHM board member Karen Reiss shows the projected budget laid out in the Crossroads report. Photo by Bob Doran

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In August 2008, museum director Melissa Zielinski filed a report titled, “Sustainability of the HSU Natural History Museum: At the Crossroads” with the College of Natural Resources and Sciences (CNRS), the campus department that overseas the museum. Her description of a museum budget stretched thin was ultimately the basis for the university’s decision to permanently cut off all funding for the museum, according to Dean Jim Howard.

In Howard’s analysis, Zielinski’s “crossroads” report provided justification for closing the NHM. For years the museum has survived with three full-time staff members and a part time administrative assistant. In her proposal, the museum director came up with an estimated cost of funding for two more full time positions, plus $40,000 to buy a portable unit so that staff could have office space outside the museum proper — an increase of around $130,000 altogether.

Standing beneath a life-size model of a great white shark at a meeting of museum supporters last Wednesday, Howard kneaded his hands nervously as he laid out the dire state of the California State University system’s own budget. Overall, CSU is facing a $600 million reduction in funding due to the state’s financial crisis; HSU will likely absorb up to $16 million in cuts with $10 million in “base budget reductions,” most of that money coming from academic affairs.

This comes as HSU welcomes the largest freshman class in history, creating what Howard described as “a perfect storm of deceasing revenue and increasing demand.” As a result they are “jettisoning pieces of the university” including “closure of academic programs and the disappearance of degrees.”

The Natural History Museum is not a direct part of any HSU academic program; it mostly serves the wider community, in particular elementary school children. With all that in mind, the museum budget must have seemed an easy, low-hanging limb to lop off as budget pruning began.

“There’s discussion about closing or restricting public access to the [Telonicher] Marine Lab, closing or restricting use of the fish hatchery on campus and the greenhouses; it goes on and on,” said Howard. “I don’t know where this is going to end, but I know where it started.”

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