Mocs football player Reuben Lowery III, shown here on Homecoming 2024 (Oct. 26), is a member of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee/Student-Athlete Connection Group. Photo by Angela Foster.
Down. Set. Blue 87. Blue 87. Motion right. The quarterback doesn’t know it but the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga nickelback is using his mechanical engineering bachelor’s degree to read the offensive formation.
If Reuben Lowery III intercepts the pass, there’s a decent chance he’ll take it to the house. (Two of his three career interceptions have been pick-six touchdowns.)
Lowery is one of two Mocs named to the prestigious Senior Bowl Watchlist, but he is better known off the football field for his academics, including a 3.78 GPA and a degree in engineering—as well as his love of Christ.
Lowery last year was named to the Football Championship Subdivision Athletic Directors Association’s All-Star Team and currently is a member of the select NCAA Football Oversight Committee/Student-Athlete Connection Group, which provides feedback to administrators on how to improve the student-athlete experience.
In late October, Lowery was named a finalist for the FedEx Doris Robinson Scholar-Athlete Award. Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the award honors the leadership and integrity championed by Doris Robinson, a former schoolteacher and wife to legendary Grambling State University Coach Eddie Robinson.
“It was really cool to go in Fellowship of Christian Athletes and see some of the athletes come in and want to believe and want to follow Christ and want the tools and stuff like a community,” Lowery said. “That is really cool.”
Lowery said his teammates are so cognizant of his faith that they no longer ask him to partake in parties or other activities that are against his beliefs. He will have an NFL Pro Day, but if he’s not signed, he will fall back on his mechanical engineering degree—which he received in May—and a future master’s degree in the subject. He is currently in the post-bachelor program to keep up with his last year of football eligibility.
Ultimately, Lowery sees himself working in green energy.
“I just want to make the Earth more clean and restore God’s Earth and not break it down by putting toxins in it. I want to capture the beauty of what He created,” he said.
Reuben Lowery III is a three-time member of the Academic All-Southern Conference team. Photo by Angela Foster.
Lowery attributes his smarts and his faith to his parents. His mother, Tisha, is a seventh-grade math teacher in the Atlanta suburbs, and his father, Reuben Lowery Jr., was a pastor before his son was born. He is now an engineer and senior manager at Workday, an artificial intelligence platform that unites human resources and finance.
“My family has always been involved with what we thought God called us to do and always tried to be obedient to what the voice of God said,” said Reuben Jr., who—with his wife—has seen their son play in every game since 2020, except for those he missed due to injury. “It would be exciting to showcase his football skills [in the NFL], but he’ll do whatever God’s will is because he knows God is sovereign. I learned that in my early 30s. Reuben learned it in his late teens, and it wows me to see how he’s balanced and being OK to leave things in God’s hands.”
Retired high school football coach Phillip Ironside coached Reuben III from middle school to high school at Hillgrove High in Powder Springs, Georgia—26 minutes from downtown Atlanta.
“Reuben was a young man of high integrity. He was a leader on and off the field for us. He was a consistent member of our team Bible study,” Ironside said. “Pound for pound, he was one of the strongest players on the team. Outstanding student as well as a tremendous player for Hillgrove. Reuben was very quiet and led by example and was extremely easy to coach.”
Lowery’s nickelback position at UTC is different than most teams: It’s a hybrid slot safety position in which Lowery does it all, from defending receivers to linebacking against the run to rushing the passer from a defensive end position.
“Reuben is special,” UTC Head Coach Rusty Wright said in a press release announcing Lowery as one of 13 FedEx Robinson Award finalists nationwide. “On the field, off the field and everywhere in between. He’s exactly what you want in a student-athlete. His impact for us is evident every week, but if you go to the engineering department, you’ll hear the same things about him as a student. We are thankful he chose Chattanooga.”
Assistant Athletic Director Jim Horten said in addition to his academic and athletic prowess, Lowery could always use his rich baritone for voiceover work. He said Lowery is “one of a kind, a phenomenal kid.”
He noted that Lowery is a former member of the Rocket Mocs, which was named by NASA last year as one of the best rocketry teams in the country for a fifth consecutive year. The Rocket Mocs traveled to the Mojave Desert and broke a record by sending a student-built ship past 35,000 feet, but the team was disqualified when a parachute malfunction caused the recovery to fail, said Dr. Trevor Elliott, primary faculty advisor for the Rocket Mocs.
“Reuben is an excellent student,” said Elliott, a UC Foundation associate professor of mechanical engineering. “He has an overall thirst for knowledge and is open to working on diverse topics.”
Elliott was so impressed with Lowery that he enlisted him to work on a summer research problem regarding combustion chambers, changing conclusions in Elliott’s Ph.D. dissertation from 10 years ago at the UT Space Institute.
“He’s very respectable, very honest, generally happy and a person you’d want to be around. He would definitely set apart from other athletes,” Elliott said.
Of being a Robinson Award finalist, UTC Vice Chancellor for Athletics Mark Wharton said of Lowery: “Even if he was not a student-athlete, Reuben would be well-known and respected on our campus. You could say he’s the standard for what we want for and from our student-athletes at Chattanooga. We’re delighted to see his accomplishments and efforts being recognized on the national stage.”
Lowery plans to return to mechanical engineering for his master’s degree “so I can really focus on that and not do the dual thing I was doing for four years.”
Lowery landed at UTC after attending football camp here. He had no other offers, and other interests were only from Kennesaw State and Austin Peay.
“I see how I was trained with engineering and how football is also a system,” he said. “If you plug in a nickelback into a system, how does he impact it? What is the scheme? Offensive schemes, what does that look like and what are offenders trying to do?
“It all fits into a larger scheme where you’re trying to make something work and move, so engineering has helped a lot.”
Learn more
UTC College of Engineering and Computer Science
Reuben Lowery III’s gomocs.com football bio
Reuben Lowery III (#7) has played in more than 40 games during his UTC football career. Photo by Angela Foster.
