The Sternberg Museum will remain open beyond Dec. 18 after gifts, commitments and matching funds pushed its rescue campaign past its initial $1 million goal, FHSU President Tisa Mason told lawmakers Monday.
The reversal keeps the museum open leaving major questions unresolved about staffing, finances, collections care and authority over its future. It also prompted lawmakers to scrutinize FHSU’s budget rationale and communication failures as national museum experts warned of risks to research access, donor trust and the museum’s three million-plus specimens.
Mason’s Sternberg testimony began shortly after 1 p.m. Monday. FHSU issued a public statement announcing that the museum would remain open at 2:16 p.m. after Mason’s testimony and the committee’s discussion had concluded. The statement repeated Mason’s announcement that the Dec. 18 closure date had been rescinded and said FHSU’s focus had shifted to developing a “right-sized, sustainable, long-term business plan.”
Mason said individuals and small businesses have made more than $638,000 in gifts and verbal commitments. With the Bob and Pat Schmidt Foundation’s dollar-for-dollar match, the campaign has surpassed its initial $1 million target and could reach $2 million.
“The Dec. 18, 2026, closing date is rescinded,” Mason told lawmakers. “We now continue to build a right-sized, sustainable business plan for Sternberg Museum.”
Mason said the fundraising addresses FHSU’s fiscal year 2027 budget cut, allowing Sternberg to remain open past Dec. 18 while the university develops that plan. Her reference to “one year of breathing room” meant the remainder of the fiscal year—not 12 months from Monday’s announcement—and did not guarantee continuation of the current operating model beyond that budget period. “This is not a rescue of the status quo,” Mason said. “One year of breathing room, one durable plan. That’s our path forward.”
As of approximately 3:30 p.m. Monday, the FHSU Foundation’s Save Sternberg page had not been updated to reflect the announcement that the museum would remain open. The page still said $1 million must be raised by Dec. 31 to “sustain Sternberg’s future” and displayed $730,781 in donations—73.1% of the goal—based on an update timestamped Oct. 26, 2026, at 3:29 p.m.
Mason said the provost and STEM dean will work with museum faculty, staff and outside partners on the plan. However, Monday’s announcement did not define what “right-sized” will mean for staffing, exhibits, programs, research access or collections care. It also did not establish a timeline for completing the plan or identify the museum’s future annual university subsidy.
The good news came with pointed questioning about how the original decision was reached and communicated.
Left to Right on this: Rep. Kristey Williams, Committee Vice Chair Rep. Troy Waymaster, Committee Chair Sen. Rick Billinger, Rep. Barbara Ballard.
Legislative Budget Committee Vice Chair Troy Waymaster told Mason that he and Committee Chair Rick Billinger had spoken with her before the legislative budget agreement about what FHSU could withstand. At that point, Waymaster said, lawmakers were weighing both budget reductions and a tuition freeze. Universities had told him a tuition freeze would be more damaging than the cut itself.
Waymaster asked whether closing Sternberg had been under consideration during those pre-conference discussions. Mason said no, explaining that FHSU had not yet delved deeply into its budget and noting that the House’s proposed reduction had initially been greater than the final $2.4 million cut.
Waymaster said that answer mattered because he and Billinger entered conference negotiations without knowing Sternberg could become a casualty.
“If you would have told me that … one of the possibilities of this cut … would be the closing of the Sternberg Museum, I would have done something different in conference,” Waymaster said.
Waymaster also referred to conversations with Mason after the closure became public—an announcement he said he first saw on social media. He said he had expressed then that lawmakers should have been consulted.
Mason said FHSU’s communication sequence included its executive team, affected employees, university leadership, Faculty and Staff Senate presidents, the Cabinet and the wider university community. Waymaster said legislators—particularly the two members representing the area—also should have been included.
“I wish we would have been part of that as well,” Waymaster said, gesturing toward Billinger and noting that Sternberg is in Billinger’s Senate district while Waymaster’s district lies directly east of Ellis County.
Waymaster said he immediately contacted the Kansas Department of Commerce after learning of the threatened closure to ask what help might be available. He said Commerce officials had planned to tour the museum, although the visit was postponed. Waymaster also pointed to remaining federal pandemic-relief allocations for tourism and northwest Kansas economic development that might have provided temporary support before the spending deadline.
“There would have been outlets that we could have used to try to make the Sternberg Museum survive,” Waymaster said. “We could have found action to not even have this discussion right now.”
Mason responded that FHSU was fighting for every available resource during the legislative process and had to prioritize addressing its lower funding per full-time-equivalent student. The alternative, she said, could be “a great Sternberg and no Fort Hays State University,” but FHSU now had a path for both.
“And that’s—and I’m just saying—I would have liked to have maintained that ideal world,” Waymaster replied.
Rep. Kyle Hoffman likewise said legislators were caught off guard and placed in a “terrible position” when the public attributed the closure directly to the Legislature’s $2.4 million reduction.
“It really is a little disappointing,” Hoffman said of the communication. “We heard about it the way we heard about it, and it really … didn’t look good for anybody.”
Hoffman requested detailed museum revenue and expenditure records and questioned whether outside philanthropy should have been cultivated earlier.
Rep. Kristey Williams challenged the broader budget rationale. She characterized the reduction as roughly 1% of FHSU’s operating budget, questioned why it threatened “a staple such as your museum” and requested additional data comparing online and on-campus enrollment with staffing trends.
Mason defended the decision as a last resort. She said FHSU has reduced its budget by $7.4 million over five years and eliminated about 55 faculty and staff positions. She told the committee Sternberg costs approximately $1.3 million annually, generates about $470,000 and has required an average university subsidy of roughly $830,000 over the past 10 years. Last fiscal year, she said, that subsidy reached $856,000.
“The museum wasn’t the cause of our budget gap; it was the casualty of it,” Mason said.
Mason acknowledged that the planned communication sequence failed because the closure became public before she met with museum employees.
“The plan did not go as it was planned,” she said. “The people who heard it without context that I owed them … that was on me.”
Today’s reversal came the same day Inside Higher Ed published “The Price of Closing a University Museum,” placing Sternberg in a national pattern of financially pressured university museums. The report quoted Sternberg Director Reese Barrick saying staff had been working on a five-year earned-income plan before being told in September that the museum would close.
The outlet also reported warnings from academic-museum leaders that closures can cause long-term reputational damage, discourage donors and reduce research access. Barrick said Sternberg’s more than three million specimens support research and draw some paleontology and biology students to FHSU. He also warned that moving collections could be an expensive three- to five-year process and that loss, sale or removal of specimens from the public trust could effectively erase access to those specimens and related research.
Despite that national attention to the collections, Mason was not questioned Monday about their status, the work underway to assess them, their ownership, possible transfer or sale, or the resources required to preserve them.
Committee members also did not ask Mason about Salomon Aaron, identified in prior HDN reporting as FHSU’s outside museum adviser, or about an offer from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology to help the university evaluate options for Sternberg. Those omissions left unexplored who advised FHSU before the closure decision, what alternatives were considered and whether national museum and paleontology expertise will be incorporated into the new plan.
The absence of those questions is especially significant in the context of the Inside Higher Ed report. The article framed Sternberg not only as an operating-budget issue, but also as a research institution whose collections and donor trust carry long-term consequences beyond whether the public entrance remains open. Elizabeth Ellwood, president-elect of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, told the outlet that preserving such collections protects “the evidence, knowledge and scientific opportunities that future generations will depend upon.”
Those concerns remain relevant despite the rescinded date. Monday’s testimony and FHSU’s statement did not address whether any positions will be eliminated, whether all current services will continue, how unrestricted and restricted donations will be used, who will approve the new business plan, or whether museum staff and external experts will have decision-making authority. They also did not reconcile Mason’s earlier $20 million deferred-maintenance estimate with her testimony that FHSU has invested about $11 million in museum deferred maintenance over approximately 20 to 25 years.
For now, Sternberg stays open—but the announcement provides breathing room, not a completed rescue plan.
“One year of breathing room, one durable plan,” Mason said. “That’s our path forward.”
