Around a table under the West Pavilion tent sit seven students chatting and laughing amiably. Above them a cloudy, Thursday afternoon sky promises rain, but here in the company of friends, it doesn’t matter. Gradually the small talk around the table dies away, and the students come to order as the eighth member of their party begins handing out a meeting agenda.
“Alright, guys,” Aly Faulk says. “Let’s get started.”
Though new to Covenant, Faulk, Covenant’s recently hired Graduate Assistant for Student Life, leads the meeting effortlessly, tagging each team leader in turn to ask about their assigned job, whether it is communications, Worship Night or peer mentorship, just to name a few.
“It’s a really great team of people,” said Faulk. “We get to focus on God and learn more about God every day, and the fact that that gets to be the root of our work and the purpose of our work is so exciting.”
Before arriving at Covenant in August, Faulk attended Texas A&M where she majored in English. Though she had originally planned on becoming a teacher, Faulk postponed those plans after graduating last May, feeling that the Lord was calling her to something else. When the pandemic hit, she spent a lot of time in prayer and reflection, trying to figure out what to pursue next.
After her pastor from college mentioned something called the Fellows Initiative to her, Faulk began researching Fellows Programs across the U.S. Though the details of each varies from place to place, all Fellows Programs essentially work to offer Christian postgraduates a part-time professional job, theological coursework and mentoring over the period of nine months. One such program, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, caught Faulk’s eye.
“Chattanooga stood out to me primarily because of my connections here to this general area because of camp. I felt like it was a place I sort of knew but also really loved and wanted to get to spend more time in.”
The camp Faulk mentioned was Camp DeSoto, an all-girls camp about 45 minutes away from Covenant. Faulk attended the camp while in middle school.
“I had walked around [Covenant’s] campus a couple of times in the summer, either before or after going to camp. My parents and I drove up here and rode around campus. So I’d seen it, I’d been inside the chapel, I’d been inside Carter, I’d looked at the tower. I had a very vivid picture of what campus was like in general, like the way it works, but there were definitely things to learn when I stepped foot here at the end of August.”
Faulk’s job at Covenant came as a part of the Chattanooga Fellows Program, which looks to give its participants either part-time jobs or internships in the Chattanooga area. After talking to Jonathan Ingraham, director of the Chattanooga Fellows Program, Faulk heard about the job opening at Covenant and soon connected with Nesha Evans, Associate Dean of Students for Student Life, on the phone. Come August, she was moving into an apartment off of the 4th lobby in Founders Residence Hall, ready to start her new job as Graduate Assistant.
“My first month here has been a lot of making connections with faculty and staff and students,” said Faulk, “just getting to know the campus and the community here. Kind of the heart behind our work is just to create programming that helps all of our students better understand the diversity of God’s character and the beauty that there is when there’s unity in that diversity with Christ at the center.”
This unity easily manifests itself in the Thursday afternoon meeting with the Multicultural team leaders. Eight members total, these leaders include Benaiah Woodrow ’22, Jamie Stambolie ’23, Lisa Hill ’22, Caleb Masters ’22, Lauren Johnson ’21, Viona Okwii Brown ’22, Mary Ann Rouland ’21 and Gracya Rudiman ’22, who is currently off-campus with hopes of returning in the spring.
Together with Faulk, this group of nine hosts a wide variety of events, most recent of which has been a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.
“If you’ve noticed the flags in the great hall or the Mexican food, the posters up, the playlists—all of that is part of Hispanic Heritage Month,” said Faulk. “[The Multicultural Program] even collaborated with Student Senate to host ‘Films y Flautas,’ the hall event where you get to watch a movie with your hall and eat Gordo’s authentic pastries.”
Even when not planning events, Faulk and the rest of the Multicultural team leaders work to connect with and represent students from a wide variety of backgrounds.
Faulk said, “I think a lot of my job is getting to know the students and the community [at Covenant] so that I can more accurately see where there are needs and how we can step in and fill them, providing resources that bind the community together while also creating spaces for people to talk through hard or difficult conversations, whether that’s with me or with each other.”
For Faulk, her work is deeply meaningful, both in light of the recent racial tension in the U.S. and in context of the greater Christian community as a whole.
“As the body of Christ, we are a really diverse group of people in a lot of different ways,” said Faulk, “not just in ethnicity, but in interests and in strengths and in weaknesses. There are a million different ways that we are each different and I think the body of Christ is stronger and more Christ-like when we can recognize that through the love of Christ, we are all bonded together. We don’t need anything in common besides Christ to be unified.”
One recurring Multicultural Program event, Conversations about Culture and Race, seeks to promote this sort of unity by having Covenant professors and students discuss different aspects of race and culture in dialogue with each other, sharing their different viewpoints and experiences.
“I think when we begin to listen to one another and begin to engage in authentic relationships with one another we realize we do have a lot more in common than you might have assumed from the surface,” said Faulk.
For anyone interested in connecting with the Multicultural Program or contacting them with any questions or concerns, their office is located across from the mailroom in Carter. They can also be reached at diversity@covenant.edu.