Emma Nottingham ’25 came to Covenant after completely changing the direction of her life in the middle of a spring semester nearing the completion of an official nursing degree in Indiana. After three years of nursing school and a year working in a hospital, she felt led to transfer to Covenant College—something that, while drastic, she believes the Lord guided her to do. “My whole story is doing things that don’t make sense, but the Lord keeps revealing, so I’m learning to surrender and trust that He knows what’s best for me,” Emma says. 

Discovering Community Development 

After she left nursing school, Emma devised a plan for her decision process, unsure of the next steps. She said, “I made a commitment. For every school I was looking at, I would sit down and read every description of every major.” On Covenant’s website, she scrolled through the academic programs and read through blurbs for every major such as accounting, business, and chemistry. When she got to community development, she almost skipped over it but remembered to stick to her commitment. She remembers the moment she read it, saying, “I just burst into tears. I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do and I didn’t even know that kind of major existed until reading what Covenant had to offer.” Community development, or “comm dev,” as it is more commonly referred to at Covenant, equips students with a biblical and practical foundation to approach and properly reach out to low-income or disadvantaged communities.

Now, in her final year at Covenant College, Emma reflects on how impactful community development has been on her life so far, through professors and classes. “Every single comm dev professor has taught me so much, but probably the two most influential would be Dr. Fikkert and Dr. Wescher, who was one of the driving forces in getting me to Covenant by advocating that I was meant to be here,” Emma says, thinking back on her classes. “I remember Dr. Fikkert’s class on theory because of how overwhelmed I was by the powerful information.” Her experience in the classes continued to show her that she was right where she was meant to be. However, finding her major at Covenant led to more than just opportunities in the classroom.

Combining Knowledge and Experience 

Emma started volunteering at Lifespring a month into Covenant through connections in the community development department. Lifespring is a community health ministry and pediatric clinic in Chattanooga with a heart for uninsured Guatemalan immigrants in the state. Following her hours spent volunteering, she accepted a full-time internship over the summer. During the internship, she worked as a front desk receptionist, a medical scribe, and was the social media and website intern. She felt prepared with knowledge from Covenant for the job she was about to dive into, but now the knowledge met real-life experience and humanity. According to Emma, “Covenant definitely prepared me to learn about people who are low-income, what they experience, and how to handle situations. But it was so different hearing them say things flat-out in front of you or showing you scars.” 

During Emma’s medical scribing, though she was not allowed to speak about situations, she listened to people’s experiences and hard stories. “It helped me to just be there for someone with their story, pray for them, and sit in silence because there aren’t always words for the really hard things they shared,” she says. It was during these moments that Emma was reminded again and again of what she describes as, “a posture of humility—so crucial to everything I’ve learned in community development” She continues to reflect on what she has learned, “I don’t have it all figured out and there are people’s experiences I don’t understand—and never fully will. But I’m here to listen, learn, and walk with them.” This posture of humility is something that Emma learned both in the classroom and in the hands-on fieldwork. 

Moving Forward 

Emma’s summer internship did more than play a big role in supporting her academic and experiential knowledge—it also influenced another element of her personal growth. She says, “This summer was one of the most spiritually forming experiences of my life.” While dealing with the hard things brought up with medical scribing and other struggles, Emma got to work with a staff whose mission is to show Christ’s love both in the professional office to the patients and also to each other as coworkers. Coming out of this summer internship, Emma entered her semester as a resident assistant on campus, a spot she knows will use the spiritual growth she experienced during the internship. Her skills of listening, processing information, posture of humility, and even time skill management have become relevant now in her position as an RA, another example of God’s providence working in her life. 

Looking to the end of the year as graduation approaches, much of her future is unknown. But as she has seen throughout her life, God is sovereign in His plans. Emma says, “I’m actually getting married, but I don’t know exactly where I want to work. The best problem is that, from learning about community development, I know there are so many areas I would be thankful to work in. It’s all going to be a part of the plan God has for me, so I’m just keeping my eyes and ears open to whatever the Lord has in front of me.”

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