Solar energetic particles (SEP) are produced in powerful eruptions originating on the Sun. In past decades, there has been considerable debate and even confusion as to what the primary source of SEPs is - flares low in the corona, or coronal mass ejection-driven shock waves higher up. Recent observational and modeling work has suggested that traveling shocks can form as low in the corona as 1.2 solar radii, and that they may accelerate charged particles to hundreds of MeV/nucleon while propagating in the corona. I present current work on characterizing coronal shock wave observations and modeling their acceleration of protons to SEP energies.