This year, UW-Milwaukee's Manfred Olson Planetarium is celebrating its 60th anniversary. For Dr. Jean Creighton, this year also marks her 20th anniversary as director of the planetarium.
During “Stars and Stories” on Nov. 14, Creighton will share her favorite highlights from her two decades at the planetarium. The event is free, but RSVP is required.
“This is what I was made to do”
Jean Creighton had been teaching astronomy at UWM since 1999 when then planetarium director John Harmon retired. Creighton was invited to take over as interim director before receiving the permanent director position in 2007.
While she was unsure at first, Creighton later realized she was right where she was supposed to be.
"Then I started interacting with these audiences, and I thought 'Oh, this was what I was made to do,'" she says.
Combining astronomy with cultural programming
Since then, she's enjoyed engaging with planetarium guests, mentoring the planetarium's student employees and making interdisciplinary connections across campus.
In particular, she's set out to combine cultural programming with astronomy — exploring how people all around the world connect with the cosmos.
She says it's "a way of bringing in people who may not consider themselves interested in science, per se. But if it's integrated within a cultural 'envelope,' if you will, it might be more meaningful to them."
A solar eclipse to remember
But perhaps Creighton's favorite planetarium memory is from 2024, when around 4,200 people packed the UWM plaza to watch the solar eclipse. She says the planetarium handed out 10,000 pairs of protective glasses leading up to the eclipse.
"One of my favorite memories was a colleague at UWM who said, 'I've been here for like 20 years and this was the top event where I felt like, wow, we really are a community,'" Creighton says.
And for Creighton, that's what it's all about: bringing people together to gaze at the sky.
"Giving that opportunity to people to just look up and appreciate what it is that we see — where we belong and how to take care of the planet, our home — is very important," she says.
