Shared Experiences - Group Session

Storyteller sharing of his college experience with the students in the room.

Today we launched the first session of Sharing Life Stories with Shockers for the new semester. Now in its sixth semester, this intergenerational project intentionally brings together Wichita State University freshmen in the Connecting Generations first-year seminar with storytellers from Shepherd’s Crossing Senior Living. For only the second time in our project, this fall our storytellers travel to campus for each session. We meet in the Digital Research and Transformation Hub—a perfect space for our small groups to gather and share.

The Digital Research and Transformation Hub on Innovation Campus, Wichita State University.

We have the pleasure of welcoming 12 storytellers to campus this semester—six individuals and three couples. Students and storytellers will engage across a series of six, one-hour sessions for the next month. Their mission? To listen. To be engaged. To learn. As storytellers share their legacies, students will collect their life story in audio form through the Life Bio Memory app. It is actually our partnership with Life Bio Memory that makes this experience possible, and memorable for generations to come. You see, the app collects the precious audio of the storyteller, and we collectively work together in producing a life story book as the end product. But that starts next week. Today, we learned how much we have in common, as students and storytellers alike shared memories from their first college experiences. You wouldn't know they were separated by a couple of generations, as the experiences shared struck a chord with nearly everyone in the room.

Getting to know each other in our small groups.

Whether it was moving to a bigger city, experiencing independence for the first time, meeting new friends, or carving out new paths—you couldn’t always tell if the story was from an 18-year-old or an 80-year-old. And that’s exactly the point. When we make space to listen, we discover just how much we have in common. So, here's to the beginning of new connections and the stories that will be told.

Here's to Connecting Generations!

A peek at our small groups getting to know one another.