It’s a quarter to 10 a.m., and Mary Anne Scott is gathering up her sheet music to head to voice lessons at Lilly Hall. She pulls on her dark brown blazer that complements her beaded necklace, and leaves Schwitzer Hall for another day of music classes at Butler University. Yet one thing sets her apart from the 449 other Schwitzer Hall residents. Mary Anne is not a student -- she is a visiting assistant professor of music.

Mary Anne is among several Butler faculty members who are experiencing a unique lifestyle through the Faculty-in-Residence program. Mary Anne oversees a floor of college women and has a large budget to do a variety of activities. In exchange, she receives room and board on campus. She and her husband live in a quaint apartment on the first floor of Schwitzer Hall, an all-female residence hall.

She decided to move into Schwitzer Hall because of her lifelong desire to have unique experiences.

“I think the main reason [my husband and I] did this was because it’s another adventure,” Scott said. “It keeps life from being boring.”

Although the residents benefit from the extracurriculars, including trips to the zoo, theater and restaurants, Mary Anne has gained from opportunities in a different way.

“The nice thing as a faculty member is I’ve been able to meet other faculty members [outside of the fine arts college] and students with different majors. It’s broadened my experience at Butler,” Scott said.

Mary Anne’s background would suggest that her efforts at Butler aren’t the first time she has tried anything new. Her husband Gary Scott admits that.

“In many ways, Mary Anne is much more adventuresome than me. I have a routine and I’m pretty comfortable,” he said. “Mary Anne says, ‘This sounds like a good idea. Why don’t we try it?’ So she’s very challenging to me that way.”

It has been her passion for music that has driven her, both literally and figuratively, all over the world. Her musical endeavors have taken her to Chicago, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Switzerland and Italy.

“I think I was triggered by the fact that my family took a vacation every summer. We would go by car, nothing fancy, and travel to different parts of the U.S. I found that really interesting. It’s something that I’m really grateful to my parents for,” Scott said.

She began seriously pursuing music while studying at Wheaton College’s Conservatory of Music, near Chicago. Although she had played the church organ as a child, she chose vocal performance as her concentration in college. While she did spend some of her free time performing in the Chicago area, she also spent two summers in Virginia with the Wolftrap Farm Park, where she worked as an apprentice artist and gained valuable professional experience.

She then auditioned in Switzerland, where she played leading roles in world-renowned operas, such as Mimi in “La Boheme” and Pamina in “The Magic Flute.” Mary Anne explained opera as like “entering a whole new world where you explore things you might not in real life. It’s an art form where you can create a whole new reality.”

Her love of opera came during her college years while studying in Europe on a fine arts tour.

“I was watching ‘Don Giovanni’ and there was something about that performance that just swept me away, and I thought ‘That’s what I want to do,’” she said.

For Mary Anne, the facets of opera have affected her, right down to the simplest notes and lines.

“There are some chords that just wrench your heart and it brings a tear to your eye. I think it’s one of the most powerful art forms,” she added.

She and Gary, newly married, lived there for three years, and she also gave birth to the older of her two sons while abroad.

While she has had extensive experience singing opera, there was a period of time when Mary Anne found herself not playing a character, but playing the roles of founder, artistic director and producer of her own opera company.

Mary Anne, Gary and their son moved to Quincy, Ill. to be closer to their families.

“What I thought was going to end up being a very boring time in Illinois ended up being extremely creative and busy,” she said.

Mary Anne saw a need for opera in the area.

“We called it ‘Muddy River Opera Company.’ We tried to make it sound fun,” she added.

Mary Anne held auditions at universities in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and even at Butler.

"Most of the people we hired were singers just starting out their professional careers and needing the experience,"she said.

Her work with the opera company led to jobs at Millikin University and Quincy College.

“It ended up being one of those things where you create your own situation. You bloom where you’re planted. I can attest to that,” she said.

Today the not-for-profit organization provides opera to the Midwest region and focuses on educating teachers and students about opera.

After nine years with her organization, Mary Anne found her way to Butler when Gary’s job required them to move to a bigger city. She had made contacts at Butler from the days when she sung with some faculty members, and found out about a job opening in the music department.

She is now a visiting assistant professor at Butler’s School of Music and coaches students every year, in addition to teaching a few classes.

“Every voice is unique,” Scott said. “Michelangelo said when he looked at a piece of marble, ‘It’s my job to find the thing inside of this.’ I think of that when I teach singing. It’s my job to pull it out of them and unleash it.”

Her colleagues have seen how useful her teaching methods are simply by the progress her students make in their four years.

“My perception is seeing how effective she is with her students,” music professor and colleague Dr. Michael Sells said. “Seeing her take a student from freshman year to senior year, and seeing that progress tells me she’s very good at what she does.”

Sells believes that it is because Mary Anne has pure motives behind her actions.

“She’s very interested in teaching. One of the important things about being a good teacher is putting the students first. She does that very well,” he said.

Other professors notice her students during end-of-semester evaluations, known in the College of Music as “juries.”

Friend and diction instructor Sheri Stormes said, “When I hear Mary Anne’s students in juries, I see a consistent pattern of growth. That tells me a lot about her as a teacher.”

Even her own students see their personal development under Mary Anne’s tutelage.

“She wants her students to have, first and foremost, good technique,” junior Anne Miller said. “She’s really helped solidify breath support, tone quality and intonation.”

One thing her family, colleagues and students have noted is Mary Anne’s balance between work and play.

“We always spend at least five minutes just chatting about life before we start a lesson,” Miller said. “She’s a mentor as well as a teacher.”

Stormes felt the same way.

“I think of Mary Anne as a wonderful, nurturing motherly type. She’s very sympathetic and understanding of her students,” she said.

Sells noticed how Mary Anne maintains that balance, even in the workplace.

“She contributes ideas within the department. Her work is serious, but she doesn’t take herself too seriously,” Sells said.

Mary Anne’s desire to continue learning and understand other cultures permeates her personality as well. She and Stormes decided to sign up for Italian classes two years ago, but Stormes pointed out that Mary Anne stuck with it.

“She’s the one who went on to take several semesters and go to Italy,” Stormes said. “She’s building a voice program over there for our students too.”

In fact, Miller has been there with Mary Anne for the past two summers.

“She’s a teacher with La Música Lirica, an opera program in Novafeltria, Italy,” Miller said.

Students from several schools in the U.S. have traveled there to participate in the program where they take intensive Italian classes by day and then perform and watch operas by night.

“The Italy program is one of the ways she’s been influential in my life,” Miller added.

According to Italian professor Dr. Elisa Lucchi-Riester, Mary Anne has completed two years of the language and works just as hard as the undergraduate students in her classes.

"She’s a good help to the classmates," Lucchi-Riester said. "She asks very insightful questions, not just about grammar and vocabulary, but also related to the cultural aspects."

"I’m taking Italian classes at Butler because I’ve been singing in it my whole life and I wanted to have a more intimate knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary," Scott said. "It’s a beautiful language."

Colleagues have seen her passion for language and culture transcend the classroom.

“When people have been involved in teaching for a long time, they lose the desire to learn, but she’s still doing it,” Sells said. “When she takes Italian, she wants to do well. I think it’s terrific.”

At the end of her day, when voice lessons and Italian class are over, Mary Anne returns to her home, one that Gary has dubbed “the palace (we just live in a part of it).” From the Swiss Alps, to the Lyric Opera of Chicago and now to her re-incarnated life in a college dorm, Mary Anne has discovered that her passion for opera and teaching has taken her all over the world. But it is that passion that makes her feel truly at home, no matter where she lives.