Building a Life Together at CU—Couple Reflects on $1 Million Gift

When Cassandra Geneson looks back on four decades with University of Colorado Boulder Professor Dave Walba, she says, “CU has been our life,” and she means it.

The couple met at CU Boulder in 1978. They fell in love on campus, chemistry department colleagues attended their wedding and they have put their life’s work into the university. In short, they have shaped CU Boulder as much as the institution has shaped them.

Geneson met Walba on campus in May 1978. She had graduated with an anthropology degree with distinction in 1976 and was working at the CU Boulder Science Library.

After they talked, Geneson asked Walba out for coffee. That first date turned into several more and the couple wed in 1981.

“The chemistry department has been like a family to us,” Geneson says. “When Dave and I married, the whole department came to our reception.”

Walba’s tight-knit relationship with his colleagues was crucial to his success at CU Boulder and Geneson had no small role to play in those relationships.

“When I was chair, she was like a co-chair,” he says. “She was running department functions and…there was a lot of collegiality.”

In his 45 years at CU Boulder, Walba worked with colleagues to launch new technology and build new programs. Walba and collaborators in the physics department pioneered display screen technology and they later co-founded two companies based on this research. He also worked with chemistry department faculty to found the Materials and Nanoscience program and co-founded the CU Boulder Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center.

“The best thing [about CU Boulder] is the exciting nature of the work and the colleagues I get to work with,” says Walba.

Colleagues Who Work Together, Give Together

In 2022, Walba and Geneson were working on their will and wanted to give back to the department that had shaped their lives.

They made a $1 million gift in their will around the same time that two other chemistry department faculty and their spouses also made a gift in their estate plans. In all, the chemistry department will receive $6.5 million in endowed funding from the three couples.

“Their generous commitments will support the department's pursuit of excellence and help create extraordinary academic and research opportunities for students and faculty,” says Wei Zhang, chemistry department chair.

Geneson hopes their future gift will send a message to others about the value of giving.

“You can be middle class like us and still give a gift,” she says.

Read a longer version of this story published on Nov. 1, 2022