The Legacy of Dr. Sam Overstreet
For 35 years, Dr. Sam Overstreet has served as a professor in the Division of Languages and Literature at Maryville College, making him the longest tenured Maryville College faculty member employed to date. He will be retiring from his positions as professor and Chair of the Division of Languages and Literature at the end of the 2024-25 academic year following his recent sabbatical.
Atop three flights of stairs and a long hallway in Anderson Hall, you will find his office. That office contains 35 years’ worth of who Dr. Overstreet was, is, and will continue to become. Overstreet began his journey at Yale University and later moved on to Cornell, where he got his Ph.D. in Medieval Studies. Soon after, he began to rethink spending the rest of his life in research. However, after some time in Ithaca, New York, and a later teaching position in China, he began to piece things together, solidified by a single idea.
“At the end of my career, I am going to be much more satisfied looking back at the number of students whose lives I’ve touched than having a huge pile of publications that probably a very small number of people would ever read,”Overstreet said.
To truly know someone, sometimes you must speak to those around them. It isn’t surprising that the words of Overstreet’s colleagues echoed this sentiment. If anything, they demonstrate that he exceeded his initial mission to impact students’ lives and influenced those who work alongside him as well.
As one colleague said, “Dr. Overstreet always makes time for his students and colleagues. I have heard him patiently walk students through problems in their essays and grammar, and I have heard students bring engaging questions about Shakespeare and Chaucer to his office hours. He has a knack for inspiring students at all levels and helping them gain confidence.”
Dr. Overstreet attributes the influence that he has had on those around him to how Maryville College orients itself.
“When a student trusts you enough to spend some time in your office talking not just about coursework and academics but about other aspects of life that are important, and that is a rich privilege to be allowed into somebody’s life” Overstreet said. “And I love that it is regarded as a valuable part of my job here and not a distraction from research.”
Undoubtedly, his passion and approachability toward interactions with students have led to a distinguished 35-year career at Maryville College. Overstreet acknowledged he was lucky to have found such alignment of values in a career as he found at Maryville College.
“It is easy to be anxious and stressed about maximizing one’s potential, especially one’s earning potential, whether there are better opportunities elsewhere,” Overstreet said. “Just do work you love, so if one practices gratitude for the opportunities to do what you love, that is what turns into a long-term satisfying career, and that’s more important to loyalty to any institution over another.”
The values of Maryville College have aligned with Overstreet’s from the beginning, but as he said, “the institution is made up of the people, and when you come to love the people and the folkways of the institution, then it makes it easy to stay.”
This value is expressed in multiple ways throughout the college, but one of the most prominent is students’ participation in its management.
“The cost is a lot of time, but the payoff is a lot of voices, and out of all the academic institutions that I know about, this is one of the places with the highest level of collegiality, of good and friendly cooperation,” Overstreet said.
It’s difficult to express what Overstreet demonstrated over his 35-year-long career; he has shown what it means to have such a deep passion for teaching that leads to a happy and successful career filled with peace and sincerity.
Maryville College will miss Dr. Overstreet’s presence in that Anderson hallway office, but he will not but forgotten. His legacy as a professor, advisor, colleague and friend will continue to inspire the campus community and beyond.