There’s something about a story that makes a place feel alive. Not just remembered, but felt.
At Maryville College, that feeling is exactly what the new Storytelling Project hopes to capture: moments that might otherwise fade, but instead become part of something lasting.
For MC Director of Alumni Affairs Jennifer Triplett, who helped launch the project, the idea began with something simple: listening.
“I have grown up listening to StoryCorps on NPR,” Triplett said. “I’ve always understood the power of storytelling and those personal connections.”
As she met more alumni, those connections only deepened. Each conversation revealed something new, stories of friendships, traditions, and lives shaped in ways that didn’t end at graduation.
“The more alumni I meet, the more stories I get to hear that they want to tell,” she said.
The project, launched during the 150th anniversary of the college’s Alumni Association, gives those stories a home. Through an online platform, alumni can submit written memories, photos, and even voice recordings, creating a living archive of the Maryville College experience.
But the project is about more than preservation. It’s about recognition.
“I think people are just waiting to be asked,” Triplett said. “Being able to tell a story, even if it’s personal or embarrassing, it becomes a way that we can be a little bit vulnerable and find that deeper connection with each other.”
That connection is something she believes defines Maryville College in a way that others might not expect.
“You’re living with your friends, you’re in the same physical space with the people that you care about. It’s something that builds connections between alumni because we all have this shared experience,” Triplett said.
Even as time passes, that experience doesn’t disappear. It just changes shape.
“People think things are so different now,” Triplett said. “But there’s still that same thread of the student experience. People are still meeting and forming lifelong connections.”
Some of those connections begin in ways that feel almost accidental.
One story submitted to the project captures that idea perfectly.
As a senior at Maryville College, Greg Metcalf (‘88) began receiving anonymous notes in his campus mailbox, small messages signed only “SWC,” or “Someone Who Cares.” At first, they were simple. Easy to overlook. Messages like, “Hope you have a good day,” and “Smile, God loves you.”
But these messages kept coming.
Week after week, the notes appeared, sometimes with encouragement before a test, sometimes with small reminders that someone, somewhere, was paying attention. What began as a mystery slowly became something he looked forward to, even without knowing who was behind it.
He didn’t know it then, but the notes were coming from Karen Schubert (‘90), a fellow student who randomly chose his name from the school directory to continue a summer tradition. Over time, curiosity turned into recognition. Recognition turned into friendship. And friendship, eventually, into something more.
Thirty-six years later, the two are still together, now married, with children and grandchildren, and a story that began with something as small as a note in a campus mailbox.
It’s the kind of story that might have stayed private, something told at family gatherings or remembered quietly between the two of them. But through the Storytelling Project, it becomes something bigger.
It becomes part of the Maryville College story.
For Triplett, that’s the heart of the project.
“Getting to hear stories from people from the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ‘60s, I just had never heard those before,” she said. “It’s so important to document those stories so future generations can understand what we share.”
While buildings change and technology shifts, the core of the experience remains the same: people finding each other, forming connections, and carrying those moments with them long after they leave the Maryville College campus.
And now, those moments have somewhere to live.
In a world that moves quickly, where memories can fade as easily as they are made, the Storytelling Project offers something different. A way to hold onto the small things. The unexpected things. The things that, at the time, might not have seemed important at all.
At Maryville College, those moments don’t disappear. They become stories.
And those stories, in turn, become a way of remembering not just what happened, but why it mattered.
Find the stories or submit your own at https://alumni.maryvillecollege.edu/page/scots-storytelling-project.
