Six microscopes have disappeared from the biology department-five Nikon SMZ645 microscopes and one Nikon Alphaphot microscope. The total value of the missing items is $9200.
If you have been in New Science or Youngchild during the past week, you may have noticed flyers about missing microscopes.
According to the biology department’s Assistant Laboratory Supervisor JoAnn Stamm, they realized that three of these were missing during an end-of-summer inventory.
She added that the department has around 200 microscopes, making it difficult to keep track of them at all times, so it is easy not to notice missing equipment at first.
“We were using all of them first term,” said Biology Laboratory Supervisor Wayne Krueger. “They were spread all around the whole department, and then we needed 25 to set up a lab.”
In December, as they attempted to ready everything for the first Biology 110 lab, they realized that more microscopes were missing and that they must have disappeared sometime during first term.
Stamm said, “We went through and scoured our department, then chemistry, geology, anywhere they could be.”
After their thorough search and a careful inventory failed to produce the microscopes in question, they had to take action.
Last week they informed campus security, as well as the Appleton police department and posted flyers.
“The more awareness there is, the more eyes that are out there looking,” adds Stamm.
Both Stamm and Kruger remain hopeful that the equipment will make its way back to them. Several years ago, the department had two microscopes go missing that were eventually returned.
If you have any information about this missing equipment, please call Wayne Krueger at 832-6745 or JoAnn Stamm at 823-7199 in the biology department.
Microscopes missing from biology department
