Career geologist Donald Mikulic believes the story of Wisconsin, from the location of its cities to the rise of industries, is rooted in its unique geological history.
“Geology teaches us why Wisconsin was settled, how it was settled, where cities were located, where everything developed — that’s all controlled by geology,” says Mikulic, curator at the Weis Earth Science Museum in Menasha and retired senior paleontologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Geology is the foundation of everything.”
Residents of the New North region have an uncommon resource to gain an understanding of the region’s geology that laid the foundation for its very existence.
Tucked behind the Barlow Planetarium on the UWO Fox Cities campus, the Weis Earth Science Museum provides interactive educational programming on rocks, minerals and fossils to more than 14,000 students annually, in addition to several thousand public visitors and event attendees.
The Weis Earth Science Museum is the official mineralogical museum of Wisconsin. Visitors can walk through a replica mine tunnel, shoot off a quarry blast, touch a dinosaur bone and explore Wisconsin’s geologic history through permanent and temporary exhibits of its collection topping 10,000 specimens.
Mikulic says the museum has a strong connection with local businesses in the stone industry and often serves in a consultative role.
“We work with different companies that’ll ask us questions about their operations or municipalities and infrastructure. We’re the experts on some of these things,” he says. “We have an interest in going to those places because that’s our basic research interest, so it works together real well.”
Mikulic’s wife, Joanne Kluessendorf, was the founding director of the museum, which opened in 2002. In 2006, her work designing the museum and developing its exhibits earned her a prestigious American Geosciences Institute Award.
“[Robert] Ballard got that award for his work on the Titanic. People like Stephen Jay Gould, the famous science writer, got that award,” Mikulic says. “So for this little museum, that is a pretty big accomplishment.”
Despite the museum’s big impact and industry acclaim, Mikulic says there is little community awareness of it.
“People come in here and they’re dumbfounded because they walk down a little hall and all of a sudden there’s this giant museum,” he says. “People don’t realize that it’s here. There’s not a lot of community knowledge about what it is, how important it is and how different it is.”
Increasing awareness of the museum has become top priority for Mikulic since UW Oshkosh announced this summer that it would close the Fox Cities campus after the spring 2025 semester, citing a nearly 67% decline in enrollment over the past decade.
The Weis Earth Science Museum land and facilities are jointly owned by Winnebago and Outagamie counties. Talks of transitioning from a UW campus to a county campus are in progress.
UWO Chief of Staff Alex Hummel says the university is working with representatives from both Outagamie and Winnebago counties on a plan for the campus transition on June 30, 2025.
“Our efforts include discussions about the public entities within the counties-owned campus, including the Weis Earth Science Museum,” he says.
At a UW Oshkosh Fox Cities Board of Trustees meeting in August, stakeholders discussed having an outside accredited university take over the campus facilities, but talks remain ongoing. The trustees have approved appraisals of the Weis and several other campus facilities.
While the future is uncertain, Mikulic is focused on educating the public not only on the role of geology in their everyday lives, but on the rare gem that currently exists in their backyard.
“This is a unique treasure not just for the local community, but for the state of Wisconsin,” he says. “There’s no other place you can go where you can get this kind of education about Wisconsin, why it was settled, how it was settled, how it relates to geology. There aren’t any other places that do that.”
More on the web uwosh.edu/weis
