Twenty college students crowded into the quiet lobby of TVA’s Chattanooga headquarters recently, dressed in business attire for a tour of one of the area’s biggest employers as part of a community program to get students plugged into downtown employers.
Some students hoped to score an internship or even a job, while others just wanted to lay eyes on “the bunker,” a control room that manages the flow of electricity from TVA’s 56 power-producing units to the 155 local power distributors serving 9 million customers.
The UTC field trip to TVA was part of the Plugdin program, a partnership between River City Co. and the Young Professionals Association of Chattanooga, said Kim White, president and CEO of River City Co.
“The Plugdin program helps us increase connections between UTC and downtown’s central business district, home to many of Chattanooga’s major employers,” White said.
Plugdin was originally conceived as a way to bridge the gap between students graduating from area universities and the staffing needs of major downtown employers, “with the hope the students would consider Chattanooga as a place to start their career,” said Lisa Flint, a spokeswoman for River City Co.