KU News Release

Graduation stories: KU staff member overcomes cancer to complete master’s

Sofia Galarza Liu

LAWRENCE — To say Sofia Galarza Liu had a bad summer in 2002 is an epic understatement.

Instead of sun, vacation and fun, the University of Kansas staff member had surgery, school and work. But despite the hardships, Liu finished her master’s degree and helped the Spencer Museum of Art take a technological leap.

Liu, collections manager at the museum, was in the middle of two major projects when she went to the hospital for surgery to repair a knee injury. She was co-managing a digitization project to make the museum’s collections more accessible and working on a master’s degree in museum studies. After the surgery, doctors discovered Liu had thyroid cancer.

She endured another surgery to remove her thyroid and then underwent radioactive iodine treatment. The treatment is notorious for taking a lot out of a person, but it was not enough to make her stop. She continued working and took three credit hours that fall.

Fortunately, the cancer was detected early, and she is now in remission.

Liu’s life and career haven’t always been that grim. A Lawrence native, she earned a bachelor’s in art history from KU and started working at the Spencer museum as a student in 1997. She worked as a greeter and in a variety of other roles at a place she’d long wanted to be.

“I’ve always been interested in museums,” Liu said. “My father works at the Natural History Museum. The joke at home is that museum work is the ‘family business.’ ”

After earning her bachelor’s, she left Lawrence for a short time. She returned to the Spencer museum in 2001 to work in its registrar’s office, where she helped implement a new collection management database. For the project, she established data entry standards, organized records and customized the database to fit the museum’s needs. The Spencer museum is one of the first museums in the United States to use the software.

“It’s been one of the biggest projects undertaken at the museum in terms of resources,” she said.

Approximately 17,000 database records are now available through the digital library. They will eventually be accessible through the museum’s Web site.

Thanks in part to her work on the project, Saralyn Reece Hardy, director of the museum, nominated Liu to take part in a Getty Leadership Institute program called “Museum Leaders: The Next Generation.” The weeklong leadership seminar was designed for promising young museum professionals. Twenty-eight people from across the United States and countries such as Canada and Kenya took part in the program last fall in Los Angeles, Calif.

Liu finished her master’s degree in December and will take part in a master’s hooding ceremony later this month. Her degree in hand, Liu plans to stay at Spencer museum in her role as collections manager.

Although cancer wasn’t enough to derail her academic and professional careers, there was one event that convinced her to take some time off. When her daughter, Silvia, was born two years ago, Liu took a break from the books and her job. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to stay away long.

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The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.