On Thursday September 11th, 2014, the leadership council of IONiC lost one of their own. Maggie Geselbracht lost a long, hard battle with lymphoma. She was a dedicated wife, mother, teacher, scholar, and a dear, dear friend.

I first met Maggie at the San Diego ACS meeting in 2001 at a symposium on teaching inorganic chemistry in the new century. I remember she spoke about her “Group monograph project,” which I emailed her about after the meeting asking if I could have it to use it in my class. She was happy to share – a promise of things to come. A few years later, I invited her to the airport hotel conference room in Atlanta which was the birthplace of IONiC. Her reply speaks volumes even today:

Dear Adam,

Thanks for your e-mail.  Your proposed workshop sounds fascinating!  And yes, I would be very interested in participating.

I have often thought about ways to gather inorganic chemists to talk about the curriculum and how it differs at various institutions. This seems like a great place to start.  When I was a postdoc at Madison, I attended a meeting of MACTLAC (Midwest Association of Chemistry Teachers at Liberal Arts Colleges), and one of the best aspects of the meeting were the 2 hour disciplinary breakout sessions that brought together Inorganic chemists to talk about textbooks and curricula.  I have always wished there was a similar group on the West Coast although the distances make it a bit more challenging.

I look forward to hearing more about the workshop as your plans develop.  Let me know if you need more information (CV, etc.) from me.

Cheers,

Margret

me and Mag-bot in Portland, October, 2013

Maggie was one of the first four leadership council members and her vision helped shape what VIPEr is today. She and I organized (and she named, if I recall correctly) the first “Undergraduate Research at the Frontiers of Inorganic Chemistry” symposium in New Orleans in 2008. Many of you have participated in this symposium at subsequent spring ACS meetings. Her impact on the leadership council can not be quantified, but we can begin to quantify her impact on VIPEr itself. She is personally responsible for the exact eye position of our snakey mascot on the site--she didn’t want the snake to look ‘scary.’ She has posted the most LOs of any contributor to the site and had particular fondness for exploding nitrogen compounds. She was full of ideas and had a wonderful way of allowing the leadership council to dream big while staying focused on what was possible. Her grit and determination were fearsome. Just this past summer she was actually apologizing for not contributing much to VIPEr while lying in a bed in the hospital. We last got to see her virtually at the monthly electronic leadership council meeting in July.

Maggie was a consummate educator. As a postdoc she co-wrote the textbook on teaching materials to undergraduates. She was always happy to share her teaching materials (usually as extensively formatted (NO DOUBLE SPACES AFTER PERIODS… 6 point space AFTER EACH PARAGRAPH, no COMIC SANS) and typed lecture notes.) She regularly crashed the ACS server into Reed college trolling IC for in-class activities. On multiple occasions she got a DOS attack service shutdown warning from ACS journals because she downloaded so many articles so quickly (I’m not even kidding). Thus she earned the nickname Mag-bot.

She shared those gifts with her prolific submission of LOs to the site. We have created a collection of her contributions on the site. Maggie's favorite element was, of course, Xe... I mean N (catenated, of course). Or maybe F... or one of the chalcogens...well, really anything that might blow up.  We all thought she was a (not very) closeted noble gas or fluorine chemist. She taught most of us the ‘proper’ pronunciation of chalcogenides (Kal not chal).

She did everything with great passion and she had many passions: teaching and research, marriage and family, mentoring, quilting and wandering through the forest searching for toy-laden Tupperware (her geocaching handle was NiobiumPDX).

The leadership council has a persistent chat in Skype. We all talk to each other nearly every day. And though we may have not physically met that often, she was a part of my everyday life for more than eight years.

Mag-bot, words can’t express how much we miss you.