Photo courtesy of Hudson Bowden
"What are you studying?" seems to be the first question everyone asks once they learn I'm in college. "What do you want to do with that?" is the second. These questions seem to define our lives in the liminal space between childhood and the working world. Twenty-five students from all different disciplines were nominated by faculty to follow working professionals for a day through a new company called Shadow.
Shadow is the brainchild of the Brock family, who has been in the Chattanooga area for five generations and is intimately familiar with Covenant. Frank Brock, after whom Brock Hall is named, was Covenant's third president. His son, Krue, is a Covenant grad and co-founder of the Chattanooga Football Club Foundation. His sons, Builder and Hudson, are the driving force behind Shadow.
"There's this big gap that we feel," Builder said. "You finish your schooling, you finish your higher education, and then there's . . . this thing that's, like, the real world. And there's a huge gap after that with understanding . . . what your major actually looks like in the real world in a professional setting."
"We're helping bridge education to employment through very kinesthetic learning," Hudson said.
"The classroom's amazing, but oftentimes a lot of clarity comes as you move through time and space experiencing something, and that's the value prop[osition] that we're gonna keep figuring out."
"All Shadow does is it facilitates one person shadowing another person for a day," Builder said. "It essentially gives you a firsthand look into what someone's life and what someone's day is like." Ellie Shank ’26 got to be a fly-on-the-wall observing a woman who works in biblical counseling.
"I went with her to the Renew House, which is where women who are coming out of hard situations … can kind of heal and then go back to the workforce," Shank said. "And then we got coffee afterwards! … I really appreciated both getting to see the work she does and getting to debrief with her afterwards. Getting to learn her perspective on the work was super valuable."
This go-around, students were personally paired with at least one professional in their field of interest. The best-case scenario, according to the Brocks, would be multiple shadowing sessions with people in various aspects or positions in the field. Builder described it as giving "students the opportunity to almost date before you get married. [To] try some different things, go on some dates and just see 'is that the right fit or not?'" The ultimate vision would be something like Uber or AirBnB, where students and professionals can arrange meetings as they are able.
Shadow hopes to run another pilot program next year, broadened to include more students and potentially more schools. Covenant students have a unique impact on the Chattanooga workforce. Chattanooga, according to Builder, has potential to be the most connected city in the world. The Brocks hope to help facilitate this networking in a "minimally invasive" way.
"At the end of the day, we want to be really helpful to the people that are shadowing because it's an opportunity for them to showcase … value of what they do," Krue said. "We really want to help the student to have an opportunity to be in that person's space. Then we really want to help institutionally. If Covenant feels like this is an asset that we can offer our student body that helps us stay on mission better, then that's another success that we hope for."
Photo courtesy of Hudson Brock.