The large number of graduates in the last five years has thrust GCU over the 100,000 mark — and counting.

(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the March 2016 issue of GCU Today Magazine. To view the e-version of the entire magazine, click here.)

Story by Janie Magruder
Photos by Darryl Webb
GCU Today Magazine

They didn’t see it coming.

Not Martha Davis, who was among the nine graduates in Grand Canyon College’s Class of 1952. Not Dr. Tim Sieges, who sampled three other colleges in three years, then finally found his calling at Grand Canyon in the ’70s. Not Dr. David Engstrom, the valedictorian of his medical school class, whose undergraduate experience in the ’90s gave him a strong science foundation.

Not even Grand Canyon University senior Jocsan Tamayo, who landed a job teaching high school math on the strength of his resumé and the College of Education’s reputation. This, before he’d done a single semester of student teaching.

GCU graduates say that their experiences at the University have benefited them greatly in their careers.

None could imagine their alma mater would ever mark such an occasion, one that speaks volumes about seven decades of hard work, tough decisions and an unwavering love for and trust in God.

“One hundred thousand alumni? Goodness, how can that be?” said Sieges, who has counseled Christian missionaries around the world for 30 years. “Extremely cool.”

GCU’s alumni community became 100,000 strong in December with the graduation of the last Class of 2015. (And in February, it hit 103,284.) It’s a number Alumni Relations director Kimberlee Marlow had been watching expectantly for months.

“It’s a monumental milestone,” said Marlow, herself an alum (MBA, ’15). “We are a community of 100,000 people who have established the University beyond its walls. Our alumni cross country borders, ages, modalities, and they represent a diverse and really caring network of individuals.”

They are bold entrepreneurs at the helm of technology companies, compassionate doctors and nurses who trot the globe on their own dime to heal the bodies and souls of the world’s most marginalized populations, and teachers who give their time, talents and treasures to educate children in trying times. They are brilliant preachers and worship leaders living out John 3:16 every day of their lives and performers who were well-trained not on the coasts, but in the Arizona desert.

“Employers continually seek out our graduates because they represent the academic integrity, strong faith and servant leadership upon which the university is grounded,” GCU President Brian Mueller said. “Our alumni have a rich history as Biblical scholars, teachers, nurses and business leaders and are now moving into medical fields, engineering, computer science and information technology.”

They have made their mark.

A track record for the ages

Davis, a sophomore at Grand Canyon when it opened in Prescott, Ariz., in 1949, studied English and Bible. She was joined by a few other young women and many men, fresh off duty in World War II going to school on the G.I. Bill.

The college moved in 1951 to a wide-open space on Camelback Road in west Phoenix, and Davis’ class was the first to graduate there the following spring.

Two years later, Jim Carter arrived on basketball and baseball scholarships, met and married his wife, Ginger, and graduated in 1957 with a physical education diploma. “My professors were interested in Jim Carter as a person, not a matriculation number,” he said.

He went on to earn a master’s in educational administration from Arizona State University and a law degree from The University of Arizona. “My degree from Canyon means more than the other two,” said Carter, a longtime Phoenix city prosecutor, assistant city attorney and Phoenix Municipal Court judge. “I’m absolutely proud. Everybody at the courthouse knows where I graduated from, and my law school class knows, too.”

Tim Sieges

Sieges is one of those people for whom “find your purpose” is more than just an inspirational slogan. His classes with religion teachers, among them Dr. J. Niles Puckett and Dr. D.C. Martin, helped him earn a behavioral science degree in 1975 and set the table for his career in ministerial counseling.

“I learned about God’s plan for me, and I really fell in love with God’s word there,” he said.

As clinical director of Wycliffe USA Counseling Ministries, Sieges has worked in 20 countries with missionaries who struggle with mental health issues. His contributions earned him a place in GCU’s 2015 Alumni Hall of Fame.

Alumnus Brian Stout (’91) worked for more than a decade in the homebuilding industry before becoming a full-time missionary eight years ago and helping to start Thousand Hills Ministry. Based in Lake Mary, Fla., the nonprofit provides tools and training in agriculture, irrigation and livestock care to church-based projects in Haiti.

Brian Stout

“This vocation God has me in certainly did not come from a book on how to be a missionary,” said Stout, crediting Grand Canyon with teaching him to “think and not just memorize” and to dream big.

Uganda, not Haiti, captured the hearts of Engstrom and his wife, Jamie, who graduated from GCU with human biology degrees in 1999. They both went on to Midwestern University, where he graduated from medical school and she got her degree as a physician’s assistant, then opened Pinnacle Family Medicine in Litchfield Park, Ariz.

Along with other medical professionals whom they met at GCU, the couple has traveled several times to Uganda to bring health care and God’s love to people desperate for both. In January, the Engstroms, who have three daughters ages 11 to 6, brought home a 4-year-old Ugandan boy whom they adopted. Just as he prayed over the decision to expand his family, Engstrom prays with and over his patients at his practice and only gives medical advice that aligns with his Christian values.

GCU is in their DNA

Engstrom also has hired GCU alumni. “I feel very comfortable and confident with their science foundation,” he said, “but equally important, I know their values and integrity because a Christian background is interwoven in them.

“The seed was planted in all of us who went to GCU — learning to incorporate our schooling, our science and our faith and knowing that all three can blend together. It was in our DNA.”

Recent commencement ceremonies have packed GCU Arena.

And it’s in the University’s, said Lamont Yoder, CEO of Banner Gateway Medical Center and Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Gilbert, Ariz.

“You can see it in GCU’s nursing students and its nurses,” said Yoder, a member of the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions community advisory board. “The consistency of their behavior and their attitude truly sets them apart from other programs. In the real world of health care, there are a lot of skill sets and knowledge that are critical for clinical care and patient care, and GCU has always been at the top of that.”

Because of the college’s reputation, Banner employees working on advanced nursing degrees at GCU automatically have Yoder’s attention. Students in residency at Banner as part of the college’s Transition to Professional Nursing Practice program are on his radar, too.

“We talk a lot in the workplace about transition into practice, and that transition for GCU graduates has been extremely smooth,” he said. “They are well prepared — the level of critical thinking, the ability to learn but to ask when there are things to be asked and not assumed. They are very highly skilled.”

Every time Dr. Betsy Hargrove interacts with GCU-trained teachers in her school district or encounters University faculty and staff while on campus for professional development and other opportunities, her impressions are the same.

“The piece that comes through is a true sense of purpose and a true sense of service,” said Hargrove, superintendent of the Avondale Elementary School District. “From the first person you encounter, the security guard at the gate, to the groups of educators who are sitting down to talk about the teacher shortage in Arizona and what to do about it, there’s a positive, constructive vibe that’s happening all over campus.

“Members of the GCU education community come to the table every time with solutions: ‘How can we work together to build programs for community members? How can we get collaborative conversations started with partnering school districts to help support the teacher shortage?’”

Hargrove also appreciates the College of Education’s Promise, in which assistance to graduates of the educator and administrator preparation programs is provided during their first year of teaching or leading.

“GCU is saying to its graduates, ‘We’re still here with you,’” she said. “And that is such a wonderful, powerful opportunity for GCU graduates to know they have the full support, not only of their school district, but of their preparation school. I don’t know of another teacher or leader preparation program that does that.”

GCU alumni employed by Enterprise Holdings, which operates three rental-car brands, excel at aligning themselves with the company’s morals and business practices, said Casey Miller, group talent acquisitions manager. They also are self-driven and not hesitant to ask questions, Miller said.

“We give a great measure of autonomy and decision making, and GCU candidates are able to take that and run with it,” she said. “Their problem-solving skills, weighing what’s best for the consumer and the business, is advanced.” Enterprise also has noticed that GCU alumni have GCU DNA.

“The benefit to an applicant coming from GCU is us understanding what kind of a university they are coming from — the culture, the training, the academic attention they receive,” Miller said. “It’s really those things that make GCU alumni more attractive candidates.”

Northwestern Mutual, Southwest, which offers financial planning services in Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas, recruits employees from the six major state universities in that region and from GCU. The quality of its graduates, their work and business ethics, and its ties to the community have made GCU a go-to campus for managing partner Ben Miller.

“We could build an organization around GCU,” Miller said. “GCU attracts a certain type of kid, and an added bonus is that many are local kids who already are established somewhere in the Valley. They’re better in communication skills and relationship skills, too, and for us it’s not all resumé building, it’s about community building.”

So when he’s flooded with hundreds of resumes for one position, the GCU resumes land in the “yes” pile, he said.

“If you’re from another school, you’re just another candidate,” Miller said. “But a GCU kid? It’s like if I see someone was an Eagle Scout. Right away, that’s goes in the ‘yes’ pile. It’s the same with GCU.”

Building the future

Through its applied management degree, GCU gave Phil Colon the leadership skills to take his career in technology to the next level. Today, the 1997 graduate is senior director of IT, Global Infrastructure Services at ON Semiconductor, an international company headquartered in Phoenix.

Colon joined the President’s STEM Advisory Board at GCU last fall and is working to develop an internship program at ON Semiconductor for students in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology. They would learn and work in operations and infrastructure design, he said.

“Being on campus and seeing the enthusiasm of the kids motivated me to want to give back to the school I love and enjoy so much,” Colon said.

That’s music to Paul Rodriguez’s ears. The GCU sophomore, an information technology major with an emphasis in health IT, is the founder and president of Innovative Computing, a campus club. He and other students are developing an internship program with club adviser Steve Powelson, a CSET faculty member.

The students are hungry to immediately start applying in the real world what they learned in their classes, Rodriguez said.

“I absolutely love GCU, the one-on-one with faculty and the fact that most of them are more mentors than people who just regurgitate information at me,” the 19-year-old said. “Experience matters the most, and there’s no reason not to get a jump on it.”

Jocsan Tamayo

That’s what Jocsan Tamayo, 23, was thinking when he approached COE faculty member Jim Mostofo last year about getting a teaching job before student teaching. Mostofo was supportive, and not long after Tamayo had a job interview with Holly Foged, principal at Arizona Conservatory for Arts and Academics in Phoenix. And a job offer, on the spot.

“I feel great, confident, the students respect me and I really love them,” said Tamayo, who is employed at ACAA as a teacher-in-residence. He is teaching geometry and pre-calculus while taking his last semester of GCU courses online and plans to graduate in April.

“They (ACAA) knew GCU had the greatest program in the state when it comes to preparing teachers,” said Tamayo, grinning.

You won’t get much of an argument from Foged, who had a position she was unable to fill last fall. “I can rotate substitute teachers while I continue my search for a teacher that meets the highly qualified status,” she said, “or I can hire a teacher-in-residence now who has a passion, who wants to be a teacher and will accept the position.”

More recently, an unexpected opening for an English teacher arose. After an extensive search for a highly qualified teacher who would accept the position, Foged called Tamayo, who reached out to GCU and got a recommendation: senior Lindsay Bledsoe. Bledsoe was interviewed by the administration, got the position and started her teacher-in-residence in January.

“I walk into Jocsan’s and Lindsay’s classrooms, and there’s a good energy,” she said. “My students are in good hands with them. They get a lot of support from the teachers here at ACAA. They know they can walk into the classrooms next door, at any time, to get answers to their questions.”

In December, Jen Smestad addressed her fellow Class of 2015 graduates from the dais in GCU Arena. As a student, she had benefited from GCU’s small class sizes, its welcoming environment and myriad opportunities to grow her faith. As an alumna, she wants to stay connected.

“I feel we made history,” Smestad said of the 100,000 milestone. “And at the rate it’s growing, we’re going to be at 200,000 in just a few years, not another 60.”

The post Grand total, grander feats of 100,000+ alumni appeared first on GCU Today.

By Peter Corbett
GCU News Bureau

Students in Grand Canyon University’s leading-edge Business Process Design class appear to have some bright prospects.

Some will have a shot at landing paid internships this summer and lots of interest from recruiters when they graduate, said Dr. Elissa Torres, who is teaching the 300-level undergraduate course this semester for the first time.

The course introduces students to Pegasystems Inc. software, increasingly being used by big companies for business-process and customer-relationship management. These are the systems and computer interfaces that businesses rely on to manage workflow and interact with customers.

GCU’s Colangelo College of Business is one of two U.S. universities leveraging the Pega software. The other is the University of South Florida in Tampa, which offers it in its online master’s program. Two universities in Hyderabad, India, are also teaching students about Pegasystems software.

Pega is viewed as an adaptable system that can be customized for its users with less demand for writing additional computer code to support it.

Began in January

Torres launched the pilot class in January and is teaching 14 students. Learning Pega software and concepts can help students pursue well-paying jobs as systems or solutions architects, she said. She plans to attend a Pega World Conference in Las Vegas in June and expects that companies will be looking to hire some of her students as paid interns.

“I want to help my students with finding good careers,” Torres said. “I want them to find something that will change their lives.”

The BUS-330 class is targeted for business technology, business intelligence, computer science and computer programming majors, she said.

One of the Torres’ students is in his final semester at Arizona State University and came across town to GCU specifically for the Pega class.

“This is a very hands-on class,” she said. “Students learn by troubleshooting because that’s what’s going to happen in real life.”

Major employers use it

Students who pass an external Pega exam to get certified will get a lot of interest from major employers, Torres said. American Express, Cisco, Charles Schwab and CVS are among the companies relying on Pega software.

Pegasystems, based in Cambridge, Mass., started operations in 1983. It has about 3,000 employees, and Pega’s revenue has increased from $100 million in 2005 to $653 million last year.

Torres, who has been teaching at GCU for four years, worked in computer systems in the health care and financial services sector and as a consultant.

Dr. Randy Gibb, the CCOB dean, said Torres’ industry relationships helped her bring the Pegasystems class to GCU to teach it to business students and those in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology.

2,000 jobs globally

A more advanced Pegasystems class is expected to be offered in spring 2017 by Dr. Isac Artzi, College of Science, Engineering and Technology program manager, Torres said.

“This is filling some of the demand” for Pegasystems specialists, she said, adding that global demand for those experts has been estimated at about 2,000 annually.

Pegasystems has its own training program, but it partnered with GCU and University of South Florida to try to meet more of that demand.

Torrres has been consulting with a Pegasystems executive in Texas during the semester to resolve any issues that come up.

“We’re working through the bugs in our pilot class,” she said. “We’re off to a great start.”

Contact Peter Corbett at (602) 639-7588 or peter.corbett@gcu.edu.

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Outstanding Senior Awards were presented to nine graduates in Grand Canyon University’s Class of 2016 to highlight their work and success. They are (from left) Brenna Roth, Cody Dumas, Brenda Lara, Jennifer Hotchkiss, Joshua Braun, Brittany Holen, Alena Gladwin and Calie Donovan. Not pictured: Kelsey Hillman.

Story by Jeannette Cruz
Photos by Darryl Webb
GCU News Bureau

As if getting through college isn’t enough, Grand Canyon University’s students excel in multiple areas of life — serving the community, maintaining high grade-point averages, and leadership. You wonder how they do it all.

But they do, and the best of the best were honored Wednesday night at GCU Arena in the second annual Senior Dinner, sponsored by the Alumni Relations office. The event celebrated the accomplishments of the graduating senior class, honored notable staff members and recognized nine distinguished graduates in GCU’s Class of 2016.

In his keynote speech, President Brian Mueller noted that the blessings of God are visible in the transformation the University has borne — a change inspired by the students who spread their love beyond the campus and into the surrounding community.

“If Jesus came to the Valley, where would He go?” Mueller said. “If you read in the New Testament, He probably wouldn’t go to Scottsdale. He probably wouldn’t go to Paradise Valley. He’d probably come here — to a neighborhood that has the greatest amount of need. I really want to thank you for your willingness to go out into the world and get involved. You helped us not only build a University, but you helped us build a church that has a tremendous impact on a part of town that is being transformed.”

Guest speaker Jim Mostofo, GCU alumnus and College of Education faculty, tickled the audience with a confession about ditching class to avoid making a speech while still a student at GCU, then shared his four key strategies for success after college.

“If you ditched, remember: It will come back to you,” Mostofo said. “Now I have to give this speech.”

His first piece of advice: “Find God’s purpose and you will find your own.”

His second: “Bring passion into your life every day — like Mueller, who walks with a leap in his step.”

Third: “Be good tired — God renews our strength from doing good deeds to come back with passion the next day.”

Fourth: “Just breathe.”

Influential faculty awards
The Senior Dinner faculty and staff award recipients were selected by the graduating student class based on their influence, enthusiasm and passion for GCU. They are:

• Nicole Clifton, Residence Life

  The Influential Faculty Awards recognized exceptional teachers and staff who have shown consistent dedication to the students.

• Kelly Damron, Colangelo College of Business
• Daniel Diffey, College of Theology
• Pascale Lee, College of Nursing
• Jim Mostofo, College of Education
• Will Primack, College of Science, Engineering and Technology
• Sheila Schumacher, College of Fine Arts and Production
• Kevin Walling, College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Outstanding senior awards
Senior award recipients were proudly recognized for academic excellence, service, faith and GCU spirit:

Joshua Braun, Colangelo College of Business, is a starting guard for GCU’s men’s basketball team and overcame knee injuries to lead the Lopes to a record-breaking season. He was named the All-Western Athletic Conference First Team, led the WAC in free throw percentage, ranked second in scoring and third in three-point field goal percentage, and displayed excellence in the classroom.

Calie Donovan, College of Theology, is a Christian Studies student who excels in scholarship and service. She won the College of Theology’s best student paper competition in 2015 and exemplifies her mission to serve with a significant amount of volunteer work at Feed My Starving Children and a mission trip to Liverpool. She is an example of a well-prepared, Christian-focused leader.

Cody Dumas, College of Fine Arts and Production, has been an active influential member of GCU’s community since his freshman year while holding a job and student leadership position as student body president. He will be graduating summa cum laude. He has led several important, student-oriented initiatives, including the “It’s On Us” campaign, Mental Health Awareness Week and the Lopes Support Network. He will leave a strong legacy of leadership and service.

Alena Gladwin, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, has distinguished herself in many ways — she is a member of the Alpha Chi Honor Society, has earned two medals at the AzHOSA academic competitions and has traveled to Uganda on a GCU mission trip. This year, she has served as a life leader, is a member of the GCU pep band and has founded GCU’s first Science Research Journal Club while volunteering at the Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center. She also will graduate summa cum laude.

Kelsey Hillman, College of Fine Art and Production, has been integral in the success of the theatre department, including in her role as stage manager and event coordinator. Despite the emotional demands of stage production and management, she has maintained academic excellence and has demonstrated her spiritual commitment by leading weekly Bible studies.

Brittany Holen, Colangelo College of Business, is an inducted member of GCU’s Honors College, a Delta Mu Delta and shines even brighter outside the classroom. She has earned an internship at Position Sports, Inc. where she has assisted in operations of the Chris Paul Basketball Camp, created content for the Basketball Hall of Fame social media accounts and traveled across the country to assist with Nike brand activation.

Jennifer Hotchkiss, College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, is described by her peers as a passionate, genuine individual who greatly impacts those around her even when she isn’t trying to. A servant scholar, Hotchkiss partners with a south Phoenix children’s ministry, in which she tutors and leads Bible studies for underprivileged children, and volunteers at the New Life Pregnancy Center to perform medical procedures. She will be graduating with B.S. in nursing in only three years.

Brenda Lara, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is a Justice Studies major and an active member of GCU’s community. As a freshman, she was accepted to form part of the inaugural class at the Honors College and has not looked back. Because of her dedication to her position as the vice president of the Lopes Justice Society, she was recognized with the Honors College Leadership Award. As a volunteer at the CASA Academy in central Phoenix, she acts as a Spanish-English translator for the elementary school’s conferences and events.

Brenna Roth, College of Education, is well-known as cheerleader captain — one with a great amount of spirit. Her work in the classroom is exceptional while maintaining a busy cheerleading schedule. On several occasions she has led the basketball pregame prayer and is not shy about using her platform to share her faith.

 Contact Jeannette Cruz at (602) 639-6631 or jeannette.cruz@gcu.edu.

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Gracie Shuga from Westwood High in Mesa helped build Tarantula

By Laurie Merrill
GCU News Bureau

Westwood High senior Gracie Shuga and her teammates lined up Friday with their star player, Tarantula, to await the next bout in Grand Canyon University Arena.

Unlike the students and teachers who comprise the rest of the Westwood Robotics team from Mesa, Tarantula is a robot that rolls on the ground and fires balls through the air.

Getting ready for a match Friday afternoon at GCU Arena.

“It’s a shooter bot,” Shuga said. “It’s designed from a pitching machine.”

Tarantula and the other 42 other robots in the 2016 Arizona West Regional FIRST Robotics Competition had similar dimensions: square-shaped, about two feet high and resembling small, gadget-studded life rafts on wheels.

Designed, built and operated by students, the robots’ quest in this year’s competition is to cross barriers, hurl boulders (balls) into the upper windows of a “stone” tower and scale its walls.

These are no easy barriers for low-riding robots. They have to cross various medieval-style obstacles, such as a sally port (entryway to a prison), cheval de frise (anti-cavalry measure with spikes), “moat,” rampart (defensive wall with a walkway), drawbridge, portcullis (heavy iron gate for a castle) and “rough terrain.” Defenses are selected for given matches by audience members who scream the loudest.

Robots are placed onto three-member, red-versus-blue alliances that score individual and team points while students operate them just beyond the playing field.

After matches, battered and worn robots are carried into pits that resemble those at auto races.

Westwood ranked 36th of 43 going into Friday afternoon but moved up to 21st later in the day before dropping to 26th. The robot has a consistent shot, scales walls, and conquers most barriers, which could earn it an alliance spot in the final matches Saturday, said Richard Leistner, Westwood High math teacher.

The free, family-friendly event, which will go until 6:30 p.m. Saturday, is a mix of high-tech and older times, “stone” towers and remote-controlled gizmos. Teammates don matching T-shirts, pass out buttons and wave flags and posters. Music blares.

Checking out Tarantula after a match at the FIRST Robotics competition.

The announcer’s booming voice rivals those heard on televised races and wrestling matches, while the audience yells and cheers nearly as loudly as GCU’s Havocs. There even was an unrelated entrant named “Thunder.”

The Holy Cows from High Tech High in San Diego had a winner with Daisy Chupacabra, named after a mythical, medieval monster that eats goats and cows, said junior Mario Avila. The team was second after an early afternoon Friday match.

“We designed it to be really robust,” said junior Krisztina Rakosi. “We had a similar robot (several years ago) whose task was to throw Frisbees.”

Amanda Hughens, GCU K-12 STEM Outreach manager, said the robotics contest is a great time and sends a positive message.

“It’s a great opportunity for kids to see STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in action,” Hughens said.

Haley Peebles, associate director for GCU’s Center for Integrated Science, Engineering and Technology, said the excitement and energy of the students was contagious.

“This event shows the motivation and potential for STEM careers and professions,” Peebles said.

Contact Laurie Merrill at 602-639-6511 or laurie.merrill@gcu.edu.

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Three cheers (at least) for the Havocs! You can read all about them and other student groups in the May edition of GCU Today Magazine, which has been distributed around campus and is available online here. It features an inside look at the stunning growth of clubs and student groups on campus the last few years — starting with the national recognition of the Havocs and what makes them special. (Hint: Their spirit extends beyond games.) But there’s much more, including the impact of the Canyon Kids program, the top 10 GCU stories of 2015-16, Grandy Glaze’s gratitude for his one year on the GCU basketball team, what it’s like to be a student intern for Sen. John McCain, and the importance of the new cybersecurity curriculum.

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The reactions of graduates is always one of the best parts of commencement. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

GCU News Bureau Staff

Changes, challenges and the challenges of changes were recurring themes Friday morning in spring commencement for traditional students at Grand Canyon University.

Brittany Holen addresses the morning commencement session. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

Before a huge crowd in GCU Arena, graffiti artist and leadership guru Erik Wahl delivered a commencement address filled with important messages about changing the world. Then student speaker Brittany Holen of the Colangelo College of Business followed right after with a spirited talk that openly challenged students to make the most of what she called “adulting.”

“Transformation — we sure have a lot of it around here,” Holen said, listing all the places on campus that changed in her time here.

But those changes, she suggested, have made GCU students more able to adapt with the inevitable transformations they will encounter in their lives. And then she posed this question:

“When we find our purpose, will we have the courage to pursue it?”

That’s exactly what Wahl, back at GCU after speaking at winter 2015 commencement, was getting at as he told the story of how he never started drawing until he was 30 and was at rock bottom, his career in business popped by the bursting dot.com bubble.

Graffiti artist Erik Wahl draws a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

He said he had “intentionally repressed” his artistic ability for 20 years because of a discouraging teacher who didn’t like the way he colored outside the lines. He no doubt has found his purpose now, as he demonstrated when he quickly drew portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein — the latter upside down.

After asking the graduates to raise their hands if they liked to draw — and getting few affirmative responses, of course — Wahl pointed out that preschoolers would have a far more positive reaction. “How are you going to reawaken that beginner’s mind?” he asked the audience.

He pointed to Lincoln’s declaration that “the greatest growth is on the border between chaos and order,” and he used the Einstein portrait to urge listeners to “think like no one has ever thought before” and not be afraid to make mistakes.

“Failure is not the opposite of success,” he said. “Rather, it’s part of success.”

Just as challenge is part of change.

—Rick Vacek

Big crowds filled the Arena on Friday for both traditional commencements. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

Popular place to be

The student speaker for the afternoon session was Austen Barraclough of the College of Theology, who, like Holen, had an important message for students.

“I urge you to consider what kind of contribution you intend to make (to society),” he said, noting that it’s easy, for example, to create chaos when your intention is to bring peace.

He also warned of expecting other people to think or act like us. “Never stop seeking new perspectives,” he said.

The Arena was packed to the rafters for both sessions Friday (657 graduates and 5,596 guests in the morning, 673 and 5,779 in the afternoon), and the crowds are expected to be even bigger Saturday for nontraditional (online) commencement sessions at 1 and 6 p.m. A word to the wise: Get there early.

—Rick Vacek

Joshua Braun high-fives a classmate after receiving his diploma. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

Braun takes care of business off the court, too

There probably were more than a few GCU basketball fans who were alarmed to hear this name called at commencement:

Joshua Braun.

Hey, wait a minute, they might have thought — wasn’t he only a sophomore?

Don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere. Braun redshirted his first year at GCU and got his business administration degree in three years, so he still has two years of eligibility remaining. He plans to pursue his master’s degree next.

“Really, nothing will change except that,” he said, adding that he will remain on campus for summer workouts.

Kathy and Dave Braun

But it still was a proud moment for his parents, Dave and Kathy Braun of Anthem, especially considering the four knee surgeries he had to overcome in high school to realize his dream of playing college basketball.

“He kept saying, ‘Don’t give up on that,’” Kathy said. “He always had faith.”

Both of his parents were athletes — Dave played soccer, Kathy volleyball. And they also talked Friday of how much of a “blessing” their son’s achievements are. Funny … that’s the word he always uses. Now we know where he gets it.

—Rick Vacek

Dewayne Russell shows how he feels about getting his diploma. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

The sports connection didn’t stop there

Braun wasn’t the only member of the basketball team’s backcourt to receive a diploma. Point guard Dewayne Russell got his communications degree in the afternoon commencement session.

Like Braun, he’s not going anywhere. During the just completed season, he was granted another year of eligibility by the NCAA.

There also were two other graduates with nationally famous basketball names in the afternoon session — Michael Jordan and Blake Griffin. Just a coincidence, of course. We might have noticed if one of those guys was on campus.

No commencement would be complete without bubbles. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

The afternoon also featured a little frivolity. The new graduates broke out a couple of beachballs before they got ready to process out, and one of them was blowing bubbles, too. All in good fun.

Speaking of that closing procession, there’s nothing quite like one graduate after another walking tall and proud and straight-backed, waving to family and friends and just looking radiant. They are greeted in the Arena lobby by the University’s top executives and faculty leaders, applauding as they walk out. Quite a scene.

—Rick Vacek

Heidi Bailey, mother of 5, earned her GCU degree in forensic science.

GCU degree taught her how smart she really is

Heidi Bailey, 35, a forensic science major and mother of five, was in her element at GCU’s Forensic Science Day earlier this year.

Standing by a fingerprint display, she enthusiastically told onlookers that more than 65 percent of our fingertips contain “loops,” 35 percent have whorls (a pattern of spirals or concentric circles) and only 5 percent have plain or tented arches.

Off to the side, her husband, Dustin Bailey, a GCU instructional designer, and daughter, Eliana, 15, listened with admiration.

“This is the single best thing that has ever happened to my wife. It meets all her strengths of personality and interests,” said Dustin, who himself is earning a master’s of science degree in counseling at GCU. “I see her as more confident and realizing how smart she really is.”

Heidi agreed: GCU’s forensic science program “makes me rise up, completely and totally, to thinking outside of the box,” she said.

Bailey, who graduated today with her bachelor’s degree in forensic science, has come a long way from some of her prior jobs as a custodian and teacher’s aide.

“It still doesn’t feel real to me,” she said. “This school is a blessing. It’s a complete blessing.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                —Laurie Merrill

Megan Flores

New grad caps a dual degree, a job and an adventure

At 16 years old, she was looking for nothing more but an exciting volunteer opportunity. During that time, Megan Flores started spending a lot of hours next to her sister, a nurse in the emergency room at Maricopa Medical Center.

As time went by, the 22-year-old discovered a high respect for her sister and a genuine passion for medicine, and she eventually pursued a double major in pre-medicine and psychology.

“Although my goal is to be a doctor, nurses make just as big of an impact,” Flores said. “I know it sounds cheesy, but what I liked most about being in the hospital setting was being able to make someone smile when it was the hardest time of their life — whether it was bring them a warm blanket or a cup of water. The small differences can really light patients up.”

After six years of volunteering at the hospital and contributing on a research project concerning snakebite medicines, Flores was hired a part-time as a research associate. Still, she worked straight through to her degree and fulfilled her role as president of the Honors College Club.

Flores said she intends to continue on to medical school, but first she’s taking a celebratory road trip to Yosemite Valley – a graduation surprise from her family.

“I threw it out in the air and I didn’t think they would do anything about it – come to find out, we’re actually going to go out there this weekend,” Flores said. “I’m excited to go hiking and camping, but I’m hoping there will be no bears.”

—Jeannette Cruz 

Lemmy Gitahi (far left) is proud of the growth of the Canyon Challenge.

Business star says it’s their dean who shines

It’s pretty easy to see why the Colangelo College of Business has turned out so many top-notch graduates the last two years: It coincides with the arrival of its dean, Dr. Randy Gibb.

And don’t think the students haven’t noticed.

“Dr. Gibb is amazing,” said Lemmy Gitahi, president of the IDEA Club, which together with Gibb and Tim Kelley, assistant professor for entrepreneurship and economics, has managed the stunning development of the Canyon Challenge entrepreneurial competition. “He’s always trying to help me achieve my goals.

Dr. Randy Gibb, dean of the Colangelo College of Business, rewards a student with her diploma. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

“Every time I walk into his office, he gives me at least five minutes no matter how busy he is. And when he says he’s going to follow up, he does it. He’s very selfless — you don’t find that in a lot of people.”

Gitahi’s work has shown that he possesses many of those same qualities. The Nairobi, Kenya, native has gone from Canyon Challenge finalist in 2014 to mentor for other competitors and delights in the way the quality of the entries has kept improving.

“I’m very proud of that, to be honest,” he said. “I’m excited to see where it’s going to be five years down the line.”

Next up for Gitahi, after earning his forensic science degree from GCU, is the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, from which Kelley graduated in 2004. He also sells commercial real estate for SANTE Realty Investments in Tempe.

But he won’t be far from GCU. He’ll still mentor other budding entrepreneurs — he’s just trying to be more like his dean.

—Rick Vacek

Maya Hinojos displays her DECA plaques.

She didn’t rest until she closed the deal

Maya Hinojos has her own reason for being thankful to Gibb and Kelley: They helped her sell 1,863 beds to GCU.

How’s that? Simple. She manages Comfort-Pedic Furniture, the business her father, Guillermo, started six years ago — she worked for him from the very beginning. With help from her CCOB mentors, which included Paul Waterman, she was able to close a deal for the beds that will go into new apartment buildings on campus.

“Without them, I don’t think I would have been able to even start that sale,” she said.

But Hinojos, who majored in business administration and minored in entrepreneurial studies, showed during her time at GCU that she’s hardly a sales wallflower. She was the president of CCOB’s chapter of DECA, an international association of marketing students, and this week won first place in Professional Sales at its International Career Development Conference in Washington, D.C.

The skills she used at that conference are the same ones that have enabled her to successfully sell furniture.

“I love talking to people. I love meeting people,” she said. “I’m very passionate about owning my time.”

She plans to focus on her dad’s business for the next year, but after that she’d like to get into furniture design. But she first might need to get more comfortable with her college days being over.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said. “Without GCU, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

Don’t sleep on her future.

—Rick Vacek

David LaJeunesse, joined by Dr. Randy Gibb, the CCOB dean (left), and Jerry Colangelo, for whom the college is named, displays one of his Overflow Bottles.

Overflowing with good memories

David LaJeunesse has been thinking a lot about what this day will be like. He has been journaling extensively in recent weeks and reads some of it to the interviewer. “This is very bittersweet,” he says. “I love it here.”

But now that it’s time to go, his degree in finance and economics (with a minor in Christian studies) secured in just three years, he also is at peace with what he has accomplished.

“I feel real satisfied with what college has been for me,” he says. “I feel like I’ve given a ton.”

What he also has given is something far more valuable to some people in the world — water. During his time at GCU, LaJeunesse created a startup, Overflow Bottle, that sells water bottles. All of the proceeds go toward digging new wells in third-world countries, and he’s pleased that he was able to raise $1,200 for such a well in India.

“It’s not a lot,” he says, “but it’s something. It’s a start.”

And like so many graduates, he already has a job. He’s a client relationship specialist with Vanguard, a job he was offered in October. “Their values line up with mine,” he says.

But first he has to show his values in another way. In a week and a half he leaves on a mission trip to the Middle East — he can’t say where for security reasons. He will go there mindful of what he is leaving behind.

“Community happens naturally at GCU,” he says.

He was an important part of it.

—Rick Vacek

They call her ‘Ms. V’

Jessica Ventura, a College of Education major, is the first in her family to graduate.

Jessica Ventura has been a devoted teacher since she was in middle school. The California student found that she was constantly tutoring her classmates in math, all through high school, and later realized her calling – teaching.

Ventura graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the College of Education, and she praised the program to the skies. She especially credited her professors and mentors Brandon Juarez and Jim Mostafo for their genuine support.

“I wholeheartedly believe that because of professors like them, I am able to teach so much better,” Ventura said.

Originally, Ventura said she wanted to teach middle school, but after her teaching experience at Alhambra High School, she said her heart is on teaching high school students.

“I love my students,” Ventura said. “They are so influential — some have really hard home lives, and I see them really push through the classroom every single day.”

Ventura said she most enjoys hearing “Ms. V” and bumping into them around the Phoenix neighborhood.

“I can say that everything worked out for me. My students are a reassurance that my purpose is to teach,” she said.

—Jeannette Cruz  

New grad has a funny kind of story

DeeSember Corrales

Through her experience at GCU over the last few years, DeeSember Corrales has learned several things — her unique name is significant to her personality, she was called to be a leader and anything is achievable.

As for her name, her parents came up with it while reading an article in a December magazine issue. It’s a story that will never get old, she said: “I’m really thankful that my name is unique because it matches my personality — optimistic and energetic.”

Some students arrive with set-in-stone plans, but Corrales spent her time searching for her passion. She changed her major three times and eventually stuck with business management and never looked back — a decision she does not regret.

She also recently accepted a full-time position as an online enrollment counselor for the Colangelo College of Business, where she hopes to share her passion with incoming students.

“I realized that I was cutting myself too short,” Corrales said. “I am confident that I can give back to the community while leading with the heart of a servant and integrating my faith. I’m excited.”

And so were the 32 of her family members rooting her.

—Jeannette Cruz  

 He is proud of his spontaneous move

Adriel Nuñez

Twenty-two year old Adriel Nuñez has known for years that he wanted to be a doctor someday. But what he didn’t expect was to leave his California hometown during his freshman year of college. It all happened when he was watching the Super Bowl three years ago and noticed a GCU advertisement.

“I really wanted to go to a private Christian school, and after exploring the school online, I applied that same night,” he said.

Within a week, Nuñez had his heart set. His first day on campus was also his first time ever seeing it, he said.

Although it was spontaneous, Nuñez said he is glad it happened that way. He was a resident assistant, worked several events on campus and consumed as many spiritual events on campus that he could.

“It was everything I could have ever wanted,” he said.

                                                                                                    —Jeannette Cruz

CSET graduate proudly walks by faith

Natalie Gonzalez

Natalie Gonzalez has a very personal reason why she chose to study human biology. The new grad experienced many near death experiences as a child — from meningitis to presumed brain damage and a kidney infection.

“Basically, my parents were told to prepare my deathbed,” Gonzalez said.

But the family held on to their faith. Today, Gonzalez is alive, healthy and proud of her story. It’s no wonder when she graduated Friday, she was all smiles.

“It’s funny how life took a turn,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times the doctors shut their doors on us, so my mother had to take me to Mexico to find treatment.”

Gonzalez would love to go into physical therapy to “build one-on-one relationships with people.” But, first, she is going to officially move from Arlington, Texas, to Tempe, where she will attend discipleship school.

“I never thought I’d leave Arlington, but Phoenix has definitely grown on me,” she said. “There’s a large, young, hipster culture here and so many beautiful mountains. Whenever I’m up there, I feel closer to God.”

—Jeannette Cruz

Concert pianist with a double major in helping others

Reisto Belovich graduated Friday with a double major in piano and counseling.

Piano? Counseling?

Reisto Belovich couldn’t decide which major he liked more, so he chose both. Friday, he graduated from GCU’s College of Fine Arts and Production with a double major in piano performance and substance-abuse counseling.

“When I first came here, I was at a crossroads. I loved the piano very much. I had my doubts about wanting to stay in a practice room four or five hours a day,” he said.

He decided to pursue a counseling degree because he has a an aptitude for helping people. But the piano continued to beckon.

“Music is such a big part of me,” he said. “I couldn’t let it go and not pursue it. When I realized I could actually do both degrees and graduate in four years, it was definitely appointed by God that it happened.”

In addition to his studies, he has a job in a substance-abuse treatment center’s marketing department, was Counseling Club president, a section leader for both the Canyon Chorale and Choral Society, and a music theory tutor.

His GCU piano teacher, Dr. Jelena Vladikovic, gave him a rave: “He’s a wonderful pianist, incredible human being, works outside the University … and as a peer tutor, participates in other music activities within the school, plays chamber music with other students, accompanies the choir, and does all of that while managing to be a straight-A student.”

Belovich, 21, a lifelong Arizonan, said he attempted to fully embrace the myriad opportunities GCU offered.

“The community of people is one of the most incredible things I’ve experienced here,” he said. “It’s amazing the quality of the faculty that are drawn to this place.”

What’s next? He hopes to translate his love of music composition into film scoring.

To hear Belovich’s piano playing, click here.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        —Laurie Merrill

International student becomes more than ‘part of the crowd’

Nikita Pradhan

By now, Nikita Pradhan has done the unthinkable.

The 21-year-old moved from India to Nogales, Ariz., with her parents just five years ago and then arrived in Phoenix by herself to pursue her college education. It was her first time away from everything she had known, and Pradhan admits she was petrified about settling into her new dorm. And, as if being shy wasn’t painful enough, Pradhan said she never had a roommate.

Pradhan said she isn’t sure whether it was bad luck or fate, but she was able to find her place on campus when she joined Life Group and the Associated Students of Grand Canyon University.

“When I got to Arizona, I really had no expectations because everything was so foreign to me, but I’ve had so much growth since I got here,” Pradhan said. “I came here because I wanted to be more than someone stuck inside of a larger crowd. Somehow, this experience pulled me out of my little shell.”

And, it didn’t stop there. Pradhan instructed students in math at the Learning Lounge and volunteered at Banner University Medical Center Phoenix while finding time to complete her degree in Health Care Administration.

Now, Pradhan said that she has the confidence to continue stepping out of her comfort zone.

She has been accepted into an East Coast medical school and will have to decide soon whether to go. But her ultimate dream is to work for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Georgia.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                —Jeannette Cruz 

From left, Megan Armstrong, Erin Jones and Britnee Van Tyle became best friends while earning their bachelors of science in counseling degrees.

Best friends for life

These three women studied together and were buddies together, and on Friday they graduated together wearing mortarboards they decorated together.

“We all took the same class, and there was a two-hour break afterward,” said Erin Jones, 22, sitting with Britnee Van Tyle, 24, and Megan Armstrong, 22.

All three earned bachelors of science in counseling degrees from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and all wore the gold cords indicating honors status.

“We started to have lunch together. Then we started hanging out outside of class together,” Van Tyle said.

They planned a Miley Cyrus-themed birthday party for Jones’ birthday and are organizing a ’90s-theme party for the summer.

You can also catch them on Instagram at #counselingcrew, Van Tyle said, adding they’re “best friends for life!”

                                                                                                                                                                              —Laurie Merrill  

From left, Ricardo Laborin, Anthony Julian and Jasmin Tomic

What rivalry?

Like oil and water, sometimes vocalists and instrumentalists don’t blend.

But tuba player and percussionist Ricardo Laborin and saxophonist Anthony Julian are fast friends with vocalist Jasmin Tomic.

You may have seen Laborin and Julian in the Thundering Heard, where they met, or Tomic in the Choral Society and Canyon Chorale.

“It’s unusual for us to collaborate together,” said Laborin, who just received a job offer from a Phoenix high school. “There’s a rivalry.”

On Friday, all three graduated from the College of Fine Arts and Production. Laborin and Julian earned bachelor of arts degrees in music education, while Tomic’s was in music with an emphasis on voice performance.

Their collaboration continued as they sat near each other while waiting for graduation to begin.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 —Laurie Merrill  

Jasmine Shaw

It’s a ‘warm sunshine smile’

Jasmine Shaw, 22, waited serenely as the Arena filled up and she prepared to receive her bachelor’s in counseling from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

For her, GCU is the definition of happiness. The warmth of the community and the expertise and caring of the professors wraps her in a glow.

“It’s the warm sunshine smile,” she said.

She’s weighing two hospital job offers, but she already is planning on getting her master’s degree from GCU.

“I have to,” she said with a grin. “I can’t imagine going anywhere else.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       —Laurie Merrill  

Olivia Gurney

It’s the real world now

After graduating Friday with a bachelor of science in justice studies from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a minor in business administration, Olivia Gurney has plans.

First, she’s going to earn a master’s in business management from GCU. Then, she’s going to law school out of state, preferably back east.

She’s excited for the future even though it’s a change.

“I’ll miss being able to wake up, take class and do whatever I like,” Gurney said. “Now I’m in the real world.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     —Laurie Merrill

Hannah Holcheff

She wants to use her degree to open a business

Hannah Nolcheff, 21, will miss the wonderful fellowship and community of GCU, but she’s ready to move on.

“I’ve been encouraged and blessed by the entire student body,” said Nolcheff, who wears a Bible verse inside a jar in a necklace a friend made.

She plans to build a career on her bachelor of arts in digital design with an emphasis on web design from the College of Fine Arts and Production.

In the short run, she wants to find a job in marketing, web design or graphics. She was a student worker for four years in GCU’s marketing department, primarily promoting GCU to high school students.

In the long run? “I hope to start my own business.”

—Laurie Merrill

Melissa Brown

A graduate’s childhood dream comes true

You’ll giggle a bit if you ask Melissa Brown at what moment in time she knew she wanted to be a nurse. She was in kindergarten when she was cast in a play about getting over the fear of going to the doctor. Brown played the nurse.

“It just felt right,” Brown remembered.

As the daughter of a pastor, Brown said she chose GCU to practice her faith and build her future.

“I value my faith, I love science and I love to help people, so this was the perfect combination of things,” Brown said.

GCU provided the 26-year-old the friendships, encouragement and training she needed to build confidence to go out into the field, she said.

Brown already has several job offers to choose from, and she received another the morning of graduation.

Although she hasn’t made her decision yet, Brown said she already feels as if she is living her childhood dream.

    —Jeannette Cruz

Couple succeeds together

Amy and Bijan Mahlouji

The day of graduation fills Bijan and Amy Mahlouji with overwhelming joy.

Bijan helps Amy put on her cap and carefully fixes her hair. They’ve been married for eight months and still can’t believe how much their lives have changed since they met four years ago.

Bijan said he found out about GCU at a concert back home in Colorado. He was convinced to visit the GCU table offering free backpacks and T-shirts, and although he was hesitant, he signed up to receive more information about the school. Just like that, after a long time of questioning his ability to make it through college, GCU happened — and it came with an even more special package.

Bijan met Amy while still living in Colorado, at a dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory hosted by GCU. The two became close friends, began dating their sophomore year at GCU and married last July.

On campus, Bijan served as a life leader, joined the Honors College and founded his own club among his group of friends. Amy pursued a degree in nursing and obtained a job at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center.

One graduate was so delighted, she broke into an impromptu dance onstage — and kept going awhile. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

Bijan said he would like to go into the seminary. His ultimate goal is to be a pastor.

“Being here at the Arena today, I feel very nostalgic because I remember the first trip Amy and I took as friends to see a Switchfoot concert in California and the memories created at each of the dorm rooms,” Bijan said.

“For me, it just reminds me of all the Chapel and basketball games,” Amy said.

After commencement, the couple celebrated with a dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory — this time, married, graduated and in Phoenix.

—Jeannette Cruz

From the classroom to the dugout

Keijiro Kitashiro, 25, will be spending his summer in Reno, Nev., doing an internship as a strength and conditioning trainer with the Reno Aces baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Class AAA affiliate. He earned a bachelor’s degree in exercise science after four years at GCU.

Kitashiro, a native of the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa, said he enjoyed his time at GCU and learning about American culture.

“I used to play baseball,” he said. “Now I like the golf.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                —Peter Corbett

Now that’s a good combination. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

Mortarboard messages display personalities

Lauren Thompson’s mortarboard read: “She believed she could do it so she did.”

Thompson, 22, of Ranch Cucamonga, Calif., earned a bachelor of science degree with a pre-med emphasis and graduated cum laude.

Thompson said her mortarboard message is a statement about her being the youngest and first of three siblings and four cousins to graduate from college. She hopes to pursue a master’s degree in California or Virginia.

Some of the other mortarboard messages included:

“Teacher — See the ability, not the disability”

“God is within her and she will not fail.”

“The Time is Meow.”

Students lined up to walk across the stage to get their diplomas in a wide variety of footwear, from purple and black tennis shoes to tall heels and even a walking-boot cast. Two grads-to-be carried their heels as they walked outside the arena in their bare feet.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           —Peter Corbett

The Class of 2016 enjoyed itself at commencement. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

There’s nothing better than seeing a student’s eyes light up

Grace Malave, 23, gave two exuberant hugs to her former dorm roommate Danielle Maelleo when they met outside the arena before commencement.

“I am excited,” Malave said. “All this hard work. This is a relief and GCU made it all possible.”

She is graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in secondary education with an emphasis on English and completing her student teaching at Valley Lutheran High School in Phoenix.

A native of Puerto Rico, she moved to Gilbert when she was 15 years old.

Malave said GCU helped her complete her education with scholarships and a good placement for student teaching.

“I am passionate about teaching,” she said. “There’s nothing better than seeing a student’s eyes light up, when something clicks with them. …It’s like seeing the Holy Spirit.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          —Peter Corbett

One diploma for each hand. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

The first of five siblings to graduate from college

Edgar Rivera, 22, of Durango, Mexico, was standing with his parents, Ramon and Marfina Rivera, outside the arena before picking up his diploma. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in business administration after transferring from the University of Illinois.

“This is a significant event in my life,” said Rivera, adding that he is the first among five siblings to graduate from college.

His father, a high school history teacher, is very proud of him, said Rivera, translating for his dad.

“This is one more accomplished goal among many more to come,” Ramon Rivera said.

The Riveras planned to celebrate with a buffet lunch at the Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale.

Rivera said he will be spending the summer in Mexico doing an internship and hopes to pursue a master’s degree in finance.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          —Peter Corbett

The post Commencement Day 1: There’s a lot to shout about appeared first on GCU Today.

Photos by Darryl Webb
GCU News Bureau

Friday morning commencement at Grand Canyon University was for traditional students in the Colangelo College of Business, College of Education and College of Science, Engineering and Technology.

The post Commencement Day 1: Morning session appeared first on GCU Today.

Diana Dilcher awaits the commencement ceremony Saturday. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

GCU News Bureau Staff

It is more than three hours before the first commencement ceremony of the day Saturday, and Diana Dilcher is already in front of Grand Canyon University Arena, raring to go.

She is in a wheelchair.

She is 73 years old.

And she is about to get her first college degree 56 years after she says she “barely graduated” from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, Calif.

She has waited a lifetime for this. What’s another three hours?

“I cannot praise God enough,” she says. “He’s in control. He’s here with me all the way. I wanted to quit so many times, and the Lord just speaks to me and says, ‘You’re going to make it.’ And here I am.”

Her path to a bachelor’s degree in communications was filled with bumps, starting with a rocky childhood. She says that she was abused and her family considered her a failure. Later, when she was getting straight A’s at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, Calif., and wanted to move on to nursing school, circumstances conspired against her.

“The Lord closed that door,” she says, but she never lost faith. She moved to Reno, Nev. (“I had nowhere else to go”) and continued to dream. Finally, after she felt a push from God to move to Phoenix, she discovered GCU.

“It’s a Christian university and it’s online — I wanted to do online because of finances. God just laid it on my heart,” she said.

She’s a writer — that is one of the first things she tells anyone who greets her Saturday. She’s a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers. She’s been published on Kindle. And you can sure she has a lot to say.

“People have asked me, ‘Now that you’re getting your degree, what are you going to do with it?’ I say, ‘I don’t know. God hasn’t told me yet. He told me to move down here — Diana, I got you down here, I’m going to take you the rest of the way,’” she says.

“My main purpose is to mentor these young kids and tell them, ‘Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do anything. That’s my motto. Don’t let anybody discourage you. God works.’”

Now it’s time for the ceremony, and Dilcher is on the end of the row on the east side of the Arena, anticipating what is to come. Never in her wildest dreams could she have predicted this:

When her name is called and she is wheeled up to the stage to accept her diploma, names stop being called for a few seconds as GCU Provost Dr. Hank Radda kneels down for her official graduation photo. The crowd roars, and she is visibly weeping as she returns to her row. She isn’t the only one — Radda says later that there were more than a few tears shed by the people onstage, too.

It is the highlight of the early afternoon session. Those people who are cheering see only a woman in a wheelchair who deserves their respect for what she has accomplished. They have no way of knowing that there is more — so much more.

“It’s not me, it’s the Lord. He says, ‘Obey me.’ He has blessed me. He has brought me through the ups and downs,” she says.

And now she wants to help people who have had more downs than ups. She next wants to get a master’s degree in Christian counseling and work with dysfunctional families.

“I went through a lot of turmoil, but it was God’s will that I go through this so I can understand what other people are going through,” she says.

This is what GCU commencement is all about. It is about victories, some bigger than others. It is about determination. It is about faith. It is about perseverance, about finding a way, no matter what. And, sometimes, it is about putting a lifetime of trials and tribulations behind you and saying, “See me now. I did this. And I’m raring to go.”

—Rick Vacek

Pamela and Delmer Maldonado

Bonded by love, family and a little competition

They hold hands, poke jokes and giggle — Pamela and Delmer Maldonado deserved a cutest couple of the year award along with their diplomas at Saturday’s ceremony.

The Albuquerque couple, who graduated with their master’s degree in elementary education, enrolled and completed the program together after years of contemplation.

“I always knew I wanted to go back to school, but it never felt like the right time,” Pamela said.

So when Delmer made the call, Pamela quickly jumped on board.

Pamela, 45, already has taught for 16 years and Delmer, 41, has taught second grade for two, but they had to learn to manage their time as parents, teachers and students. You would think the couple would share their homework and quiz answers, but instead they motivated each other with friendly competition.

“I would go in one room and he would go into another,” Pamela said. “Our adviser, Nick, knew we did this so he teased us by telling us the other was winning.”

The couple said their graduation is especially rewarding because even their sons, Nick, 8, and Gregg, 14, were supportive as things got hectic from time to time.

“To hear Nick say that we are two of the smartest people he knows meant a lot to us,” Delmer said.

“We would’ve never thought about coming here if it wasn’t for them,” Pamela said. “These are their degrees as well.”

Delmer also said that GCU staff were helpful in helping them reach their goals.

“As online students, we’d never been to campus, so our advisers were GCU to us,” he said. “Because of them, this was a great experience for all of us.”

—Jeannette Cruz

A double bonus graduation celebration

Dontaie Ferguson-Henderson (left)with his mother and father, Nancy and Richard Henderson.

For most people, graduations and birthdays are separate celebrations.

Not so for Nancy Henderson of Corona, Calif. She graduated from GCU on Saturday, which was also her birthday. As an added bonus, her son, Dontaie Ferguson-Henderson, also got a GCU degree Saturday.

Nancy’s degree was a bachelor’s in early childhood education, while her son’s was a master’s in business.

To top it off, Nancy’s husband, Richard Henderson, is earning a doctorate in business from GCU.

“I never thought I could do this,” Nancy said. “I’m going to be 56 and the first of my siblings to graduate from college.”

After getting her high school diploma in 1978, Nancy spent nearly three decades raising children and grandchildren. About four years ago, she enrolled in a local college and earned several associate’s degrees.

But it took the support of her husband and son to give her the courage to enter GCU’s online College of Education bachelor’s degree program to pursue her passion: working with children.

“I didn’t get discouraged because the teachers were always there for me, and my husband was really the biggest part of it all,” Nancy said.

Richard said he set an example for his family by going back to school and earning his master’s degree.

“Later on, when the kids got out of high school and literally everyone was in college, my wife decided she wanted to go back to school, too,” he said.

Richard’s brother and sister-in-law are GCU graduates, and Richard was considering getting his doctorate when he learned that the University had a business school.

He also was profoundly moved by GCU’s mission of helping students find their purpose.

Richard, Nancy and Dontaie visited the campus, and the love affair began.

“I fell in love with GCU. My wife fell in love with GCU. My son fell in love with GCU,” he said.

Richard, an executive with Boeing Company, said he is now the first student in GCU’s online doctorate of business administration program. He is at the dissertation stage.

He also taught an undergraduate business class at GCU until the doctorate program became more demanding.

“What can I say? It’s just remarkable.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      —Laurie Merrill

Rounding up a magical day

The afternoon session Saturday — for the College of Doctoral Studies, Colangelo College of Business, College of Fine Arts and Production, and College of Humanities and Social Sciences — drew 903 graduates who received their diplomas and a crowd of 4,471. The numbers for the evening session, for the College of Education and College of Theology, were 740 graduates and 4,423 onlookers.

The commencement address Saturday featured Justin Willman, host of Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars” and a frequent guest on the talk-show circuit. His act is part magic tricks, part self-deprecating humor.

“I know I don’t look like a magician,” he said. “I look like an out-of-work Jonas brother.”

His main message: Live in the moment.

“We simply waste our todays worrying about our yesterdays or our tomorrows,” he told the audience.

—Rick Vacek

Dr. Cindy Seminoff and Dr. Rachel Behling

It’s now Dr. Seminoff and Dr. Behling

Sitting side by side before the afternoon session were Cindy Seminoff and Rachel Behling, two GCU employees who received their doctoral degrees.

Seminoff, who has been with the University for 19 years and teaches athletic training and exercise science, received her diploma for Doctor of Philosophy in General Psychology: Cognition and Instruction and said he already has incorporated what she learned into her classroom.

Her dissertation, which she completed even though she’s the first to admit that “writing is not my passion,” was titled, “A Stroll Down Memory Lane: College Students’ Motivation for Physical Activity Utilizing Memories.”

She gave considerable credit to her husband, Rich, for getting their two children, Sandra, 14, and R.J., 11, what they needed and where they needed to be while she completed her doctoral work.

“He took on so many responsibilities,” she said, “to keep the house from falling in on us.”

Behling, who works in the College of Doctoral Studies as a research specialist, got a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership: Organizational Development. Her dissertation: “Effects of Writing Skills and Gender on Doctoral Students’ Dissertation Progression in Online Programs.”

But her biggest contribution was founding, with Cathy Ames, and serving as president of the Doctoral Community Cohort, a club designed to help doctoral learners navigate the dissertation process.

“The reason a lot of people don’t get Ph.d’s is because they don’t feel connected,” said Behling, and the college showed its appreciation for her efforts by having her be a regular speaker at doctoral residencies. “I couldn’t have asked for better support.”

She actually started on her doctorate at GCU before she became an employee, taking advantage of the fact that employees get free tuition. And now she hopes her three children — Chantal, 24, Ricky, 19, and Ashley, 17 — will utilize that benefit, which extends to immediate families. They certainly would have a good mentor.

—Rick Vacek

Dr. Naomi Hill and Dr. Verlynne Hutson-Herring

Bringing the GCU love from Baltimore

It’s not uncommon for faculty members to come to commencement just to support their students. But what Dr. Naomi Hill and Dr. Verlynne Hutson-Herring have done the last two years is most uncommon.

The site supervisors from Baltimore — they go out to area schools and do collaborative evaluations for administrative interns and student teachers from GCU — have flown to Phoenix just to be part of the big event and to spend time with Dr. Debbie Rickey, the College of Education associate dean. As an added bonus, they get to join administrators and other faculty in the opening processional at commencement.

“We come because we want to be a part of the University and see what’s going on,” Herring said. “From last year to this year has been tremendous growth. It feels so good to be part of the growth of the University.”

Hill said, “We are loving it, and we can’t wait to return next year. We had such a great time a few days ago talking to Dr. Rickey and her whole team. This is like family.”

Hill discovered GCU in an advertisement and quickly got on board, then convinced Herring, who had retired, to join her. Herring was her principal and mentor when she was assistant principal at Woodbourne Day School in Baltimore.

Together, they have 69 years of experience in education, and Hill plans to retire from the school system in two months. But they both plan to continue their work for GCU.

“Our passion is just for the children and for families,” Hill said. “We are committed and devoted to making it work and doing whatever it takes to make it work. We passionately work together to make sure that we are giving back to our communities, and what is a better way than what the GCU mission statement says for us to do? It all aligns perfectly.”

—Rick Vacek

His bishop asked, and he answered with a master’s degree

Fr. Kurt Perera

Father Kurt Perera, the chaplain of Bourgade Catholic High School, didn’t have to travel far Saturday to receive his master’s in educational leadership.

“I’m so close by,” said Perera, 31, a Catholic priest.

He resides and celebrates mass at Sts. Simon and Jude Cathedral on 27th Avenue, and Bourgade is located just across Camelback Road from GCU.

The high school and University are partners in such programs as “Students Inspiring Students: A Neighborhood Scholarship,” GCU’s pay-it-forward program to expand the Learning Lounge, its thriving after-school tutoring program.

“We have a great partnership with GCU,” Perera said. “GCU has been wonderful.”

Perera, who was ordained as a priest three years ago, has been working at Bourgade as chaplain, full-time teacher and part-time administrator even though he doesn’t have a master’s degree.

“The bishop asked me to go back to school to get that degree,” he said. He enrolled 18 months ago.

“The faculty and administration really want you to succeed,” Perera said. “It was a great experience, and I thank GCU.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      —Laurie Merrill

Andrea Pellicer

Talk about a sacrifice

Andrea Pellicer wasn’t in the Arena on Saturday evening to officially receive her College of Theology degree in Christian studies. But she had a real good reason — she spent the money on a mission trip to Rwanda.

A discussion question about what you would do in a cross-cultural ministry inspired the 32-year-old Kennewick, Wash., resident to choose Africa and serving over Phoenix and simply celebrating. That’s a good indication of why Michele Pasley, a member of the online full-time faculty, was so impressed with her.

“She is the kind of person we are proud to send out as a graduate of GCU,” Pasley said.

Pellicer, 32, was equally delighted with the program, which she discovered when she saw a GCU poster on the wall of a high school friend’s office.

Pasley, she said, “volunteered to talk by phone and sent me articles from the library. It’s staggering to me that she would take the time to thoughtfully interact with me like that.”

Pellicer earned her degree even though she has two daughters, ages 9 and 6, and her husband’s schedule as a police officer can take him away from home for long stretches of time. She also is a youth pastor at Living Room Community Church in Kennewick.

“We’ve had a crazy couple of years,” she said. “There were a lot of late nights, but I’ve been blessed by a lot of great professors at GCU.”

—Rick Vacek

On the right track to fulfill her purpose

Emily Nickerson

Emily Nickerson believes her online degree from GCU is something worth a trip to Phoenix from Colorado.

“I’m the only one in my family that has ever gone to college,” Nickerson said. “So for me to have my bachelor’s and now my master’s, it’s a huge success.”

Nickerson, 30, who graduated Saturday with a master’s in special education, has worked in the field for seven years. While she completed her degree, Nickerson taught children with severe emotional disabilities at Plum Creek Academy in Colorado, underwent a 10-hour jaw surgery after a year of chronic pain and managed to get a 4.0.

How did she do it? “By God’s grace. One day at a time,” she said.

Nickerson said she spent a lot of time thinking that she wanted to be speech pathologist, but when she pursued that career she felt as if she was only addressing a tiny portion of the child’s education. She wanted to be there in all facets of their learning.

Today, she’s most proud of one particular student who struggled with anxiety and feared getting on the school bus. Nickerson and her colleagues visited the boy’s home for a month until he got used to touching the school bus and eventually got on.

“That’s my purpose — to make every child feel safe, give them an education and make every parent feel that they are supported,” Nickerson said.

—Jeannette Cruz

Shane Everitt

He knows what it means to serve

When Shane Everitt of Peoria decided to get a master’s degree in Leadership, GCU was the only logical place for him.

For one thing, he looks to hire GCU students in his position as a claim service director for USAA, the financial services company.

For another … well, he just likes the place.

“Servant leadership is a big deal to me,” he said. “That’s why I chose GCU. I really connect with the University’s pillars.”

Everitt, 47, grew up in Phoenix and graduated from Shadow Mountain High School. He’d love to bring even more students on board at USAA.

“We want to make a footprint here,” he said. “We want to be a strong partner with GCU.”

—Rick Vacek

The color purple is just one reason GCU shines

Sally Dorpfeld is thrilled to have two GCU degrees in the bag.

Saturday couldn’t come soon enough for Sally Dorpfeld.

She has enjoyed getting both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees online from GCU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, but completing them has been a long time coming.

She is a full-time student, full-time wife and mother of three, and full-time therapist. It will be a relief to shed one of the roles.

“It’s been six long years,” said Dorpfeld, who brought her family from Lakeworth, Fla. to celebrate her Saturday graduation. “I’m super-excited to be done with school.”

Dorpfeld entered GCU after getting an associate’s degree, and six years later she has earned both her bachelor’s in addiction counseling and master’s in counseling degrees.

“I hammered right through both of them,” she said.

She will continue her career as a therapist, working to get homeless drug users into treatment, detox programs and halfway houses.

“They shoot up heroin,” Dorpfeld said. “They are mostly considered the hopeless population that is never going to stop (using).”

She says the work doesn’t get her down.

“I have faith in God and I have an awesome church family. My family is supportive of me, and I also like to do taekwondo.”

Dorpfeld praised the online program’s flexibility and organization and the extent to which GCU invests in each student.

But her favorite thing about GCU? “It has the color purple, and purple is my favorite color.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    —Laurie Merrill

Little Lopes came to cheer her on

Little Lopes came to cheer for Kimberly Dewey.

Clad in GCU cheer garb, two of the littlest Lopes came to see Kimberly Dewey receive her online bachelor’s degree in sociology.

The youngest was Dewey’s daughter, Kennedy, age 14 months. Then came Dewey’s sister, 3-year-old Lyce Testa.

They were joined by Dewey’s husband, Greg, and her brother, mother, mother-in-law and grandmother.

It’s easy to see why Dewey had to earn the degree online. Not only is she a student, wife and mother, she also works full-time for GCU as a University development representative.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      —Laurie Merrill

He traveled across the country to graduate

Kevin Foster brought his family from Boston.

Kevin Foster, 53, traveled from Boston to visit GCU for the first time and graduate with an online bachelor’s in substance abuse counseling.

He was accompanied by his wife, Antoinette, and three of their five children: Jasmina, 13, Jeremiah, 10, and Jacob, 10 months.

He enrolled at GCU following a 29-year career in the U.S. Air Force.  “I figured I’d get smart after I got out,” Foster quipped.

He said that in reality, the road to this degree has been long and not without hardship, but he never lost his faith.

“I believe it’s a challenge that God put into my life. He opened the doors for me and helped me financially and with His strength,” Foster said. “The Lord, Jesus Christ, gives me my strength.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       —Laurie Merrill

Here through the grace of God

Josina Fletcher

Josina Fletcher, 33, from Texas, felt God’s presence Saturday before she graduated with an online master’s in psychology degree.

Fletcher was in the U.S. Army as an interrogator for four years and is now a district parole officer for the state of Texas.

“I’m very blessed. As a mother of two, it has not been easy for me to get here,” Fletcher said. “Through the grace of God I am here and just overwhelmed.”

As she spoke, her mother helped her arrange her robe, and she held the hand of her Nadia, 2.

It was her first visit to campus, and she was impressed with its beauty.

“I love it,” she said. “I love the atmosphere.”  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      —Laurie Merrill

The post Commencement Day 2: Lifetime achievement award appeared first on GCU Today.

Signs of growth were everywhere on campus and at the 27th Avenue office complex.

(Editor’s note: This story is from the May 2016 issue of GCU Today Magazine. To view the digital version of the magazine, click here.)

GCU Today Magazine
Photos by Darryl Webb

Grand Canyon University continued to be an impact player in west Phoenix and beyond in 2015-16. Here are the stories that made the most impact:

The newly renovated Grand Canyon University Championship Golf Course opened and was an immediate hit.

1. Community revitalization

The local crime rate goes down 30%, home values go up 30%, and the Habitat for Humanity and Neighborhood Safety initiatives continue to make a difference as GCU fulfills its lead role in transforming west Phoenix.

2. Hotel, golf course open

The University provides jobs for both students and the community by re-opening two local businesses as the Grand Canyon University Hotel and Grand Canyon University Championship Golf Course. Both thrive.

3. Growth in academics

The accent on STEM education takes shape as GCU offers engineering degrees for the first time, and the new hospitality management and golf course management programs open in conjunction with the new venues.

Enrollment continued to grow rapidly.

4. Growth in K-12 initiatives

Students Inspiring Students is created to provide up to 800 full-tuition scholarships for high school seniors, and the STEM Scholars partnership and the Learning Lounge continue to benefit all pre-college students.

5. Growth in enrollment, grads

Ground campus enrollment reaches 15,500, and the University passes a huge milestone by reaching the 100,000 mark in alumni — after adding a whopping 68,426 members between 2010 and 2015.

6. Growth on campus

The new engineering building, Lopes Way and The Grove residence halls open. Next up are the Student Life Building, soccer stadium, three apartment buildings and a second engineering building.

7. Athletics on rise

The men’s basketball team wins 27 games, including its first two Division I postseason victories, and the men’s and women’s track and field teams sweep titles in the Western Athletic Conference indoor championships.

8. Worship Arts album

The new recording studio gives Center for Worship Arts students a place to work with state-of-the-art equipment to create great Christian music, and they use it to produce the second-year program’s first full album.

Students pitched in on Habitat for Humanity projects that renovated nearby homes.

9. Speech and Debate

The Speech and Debate Team ranks in the top 25 in two different categories, wins its third straight Division III title in the Christian College Forensic Invitational and is chosen to host the event next year.

10. Nonprofit effort ends

Grand Canyon Education, Inc. (NASDAQ: LOPE) announces that it is terminating its current effort to convert Grand Canyon University to a nonprofit entity after the Higher Learning Commission denies the request.

Honorable mention

GCU freezes tuition for the eighth straight year, President Brian Mueller is voted Businessperson of Year by the Phoenix Business Journal, the GCU Foundation Run to Fight Children’s Cancer attracts thousands of runners and cancer survivors, students and staff continue to bring their passion to mission trips around the world and community outings close to home, and the University is again the home for significant events such as Forensic Science Day.

Center for Worship Arts students, including Maddison Harris (above, singing), produced their first LP.

The post GCU 2015-16: Golf course is just one of the big hits appeared first on GCU Today.

(Editor’s note: This story is from the May 2016 issue of GCU Today Magazine. To view the digital version of the magazine, click here.)

By Jeannette Cruz
GCU Today Magazine

Juan Mendoza

Although Juan Mendoza’s original purpose to come to Grand Canyon University was to become a physician’s assistant, he discovered something bigger during his time on campus: God’s grace and humor.

As a 30-year-old father of two (and eventually three), Mendoza had bigger demands on him than his classmates did — he was working full-time in the Navy reserve, doing construction work and going to school full-time to support his family.

“Time was limited,” he recalls.

And after serving as a combat medic in the Middle East, including frontline duty in the Gulf War, Mendoza lost his urge to go into the health sciences and instead chose to enter the field of life science, majoring in biology when he arrived at GCU in 1995.

Mendoza chose GCU because it posed a homelike atmosphere with smaller classrooms and a genuine interest in student academics, he said. But outside the classroom, he became involved in Chapel services on campus.

“It was rewarding to know that GCU had this (Christian) atmosphere — you could see it and hear it everywhere on campus,” Mendoza said.

After graduating from GCU in 1999, Mendoza worked as an operations and training manager for Urgent Care clinics in the Valley. He currently is a private investigator for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security in the U.S. Department of State.

According to Mendoza, in the classroom GCU prepared him to think critically, and outside it the University showed him the camaraderie between teachers and students. But the most important life lesson he got here was God’s presence in his life.

“I’ve had the privilege, being stationed in Iraq, to go to Babylon and seeing Nebuchadnezzar’s Palace, the ruins of Babylon, the Tigris-Euphrates River, going to places that you read about in Sunday school — it’s humbling,” he said. “Although my career trajectory definitely did not go in the direction I had originally planned, I did leave with the same goals.”

Contact Jeannette Cruz at (602) 639-6631 or jeannette.cruz@gcu.edu.

The post GCU helped Mendoza find his true purpose appeared first on GCU Today.

Michael Bodeen, CSET lead instructor for human dissection, helped remove 12 cadavers from the CCOB building and rolled them to CSET.

By Laurie Merrill 
GCU News Bureau

With little fanfare and nary a word from those most involved, a Grand Canyon University era ended quietly last week in the heat of a spring day.

Twelve of GCU’s 18 cadavers were removed from their longtime home in the Colangelo College of Business (CCOB) and taken to the College of Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) a short walk away.

“The cadavers are housed in stainless steel boxes on wheels,” said CSET Lab Manager Dr. Teresa Bohman. “We just wheeled the cases over.”

It marks the first time in more than two decades that the CCOB building, also known as the Williams Building, hasn’t housed a single cadaver, said CSET Dean Dr. Mark Wooden.

Exhaust pipes attached to the metal boxes containing cadavers remove much of the odor.

He noted with a grin that some of the CCOB folks weren’t particularly enamored of the smell.

“They were thrilled to get them out,” Wooden said.

The cadavers are sharing space in  two labs in Building 57, and two smaller labs will be constructed in the building this summer, Bohman said.

The first cadavers

Wooden didn’t work at GCU when cadavers first became part of the curriculum, but he shares a unique part of their lore. It was retired Dr. Jim Witherspoon, who arrived on campus in 1982 with his wife Becky, who brought the first cadavers to Grand Canyon College, as it was called then.

In 1984, Witherspoon was tapped to head the Department of Science and Mathematics, and in 1985, he started GCU’s first cadaver program.

“We got our cadavers because I thought it was a good idea to have nurses train on them instead of on rats or cats,” he said. “My students dissected Canyon’s first two cadavers during a January term in 1985. Thus it all began.”

Retired Dr. Jim Witherspoon, left, and his wife Becky, were part of GCU for more than 25 years.

The two cadavers grew to four, and their home was the west end of the now demolished Tell Science Building until 1995.

At that time, Kirksville College of Osteopathy, today better known as A.T. Still University, received permission to open an extension campus for its graduate health care program at GCU.

Dr. Wooden’s unusual passengers

“They built the cadaver labs,” said Wooden. Wooden shared the following partial history of GCU’s cadavers:

In 2001, the extension college departed and GCU kept the cadaver program going even though the structure became the home of the business college. It also bears the name Williams Building in honor of Dr. Bill Williams and his wife Shirley. Bill served as president of GCU for nearly 22 years, the longest tenure of any GCU president.

GCU used the cadavers for teaching and remains one of the only Universities that allows undergraduates to dissect cadavers, Wooden said.

The cadavers remain a big draw. Through outreach programs, more than 100,000 prospective students have toured the labs.

CSET Dean Dr. Mark Wooden

Wooden’s personal involvement didn’t take place until 2004. GCU hired him as an assistant professor of anatomy and tasked him with running the cadaver program.

But over the summer he discovered, to his chagrin, that the school had lost its agreement with the previous cadaver vendor.

“I didn’t realize until right before I started that I had to build my own cadaver program,” he said.

He called around but failed to find a place that could provide the five or six cadavers GCU required until he contacted the University of Kansas.

KU had enough cadavers but would not deal with Wooden over the phone because its officials had never heard of GCU.

“They wanted to meet with me in person,” Wooden said. “I had to get the cadavers transported. I thought, what if I rented a U-Haul and I drove them back? I was able to pick up five cadavers, loaded them in the U-Haul and drove back.”

He has a few jokes about this, including how he felt entitled to use the HOV lane.

“In 2004, that’s how we got cadavers on campus,” he said.

Unique comfort with cadavers

The story picks up again in 2010, when Ryan Cannon arrived at GCU as an adjunct professor. At that time, there were six cadavers in CCOB and they were under the care of a full-time instructor, he said.

Lab Coordinator Ryan Cannon helped move 12 of GCU’s 18 cadavers.

Cannon said he was in the right place at the right time when he was named anatomy, physiology and exercise science lab coordinator.

“I fell right into it,” Cannon said. “Most people don’t like the smell of cadavers. They smell good to me. I’m very comfortable around cadavers.”

When the new CSET building opened last fall, it included two cadaver labs. It is also contains the Human Anatomy Workshop room, which has a marketing role and is used primarily for high school visits and classes.

Programs featuring cadavers are extremely popular, and since Cannon’s arrival on campus the number of cadavers has grown to 18.

“As we grew and the program grew, the cadavers have helped us really expand and market the programs,” he said.

The end of school marked the ideal time to relocate the cadavers out of CCOB, Bohman and Cannon said.

“I wanted to get them out of CCOB  and move forward as fast as possible,” Cannon said. “It’s easier for me to keep track of everything in one building, and it gives (Dr. Randy Gibb, the CCOB dean) more time to figure out what he wants to do.”

Gibb said various options are under consideration.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or @laurie.merrill@gcu.edu.

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Dr. Romeo Farinacci (Photo by Darryl Webb)

(Editor’s note: This story is from the May 2016 issue of GCU Today Magazine. To view the digital version of the magazine, click here.)

By Laurie Merrill
GCU Today Magazine

There’s a war going on that most of us can’t see, a behind-the-scenes battle in cyberspace between thieves who seek to steal vital information and those trained to stop them.

The weapons: sophistication, knowledge and training.

The bounty: untold quantities of computer-stored information that contains our most sensitive interests in both the private and public realms.

This year, Grand Canyon University introduced new online and ground degrees to arm graduates with an arsenal of high-tech weapons so they can immediately join the front line against cybercriminals.

“At GCU, we are teaching our students the tools and the technologies that hackers use to penetrate our security,” said Dr. Roméo Farinacci, program director of Information Technology & Cyber Security for GCU’s College of Science, Engineering, and Technology.

“We are the hackers with white hats, the hackers with halos.”

The degree is one of a rapidly multiplying list of new online and ground STEM degrees GCU is rolling out as it continues on its mission to produce well-trained, highly competitive graduates in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math.

“We want to make Arizona a hot spot for cybersecurity,” Farinacci said. “We want Arizona to be the place where data centers and corporations that handle data relocate.”

24 new CSET programs

Dr. Mark Wooden, CSET dean, said GCU is developing 24 new degree programs in his college, including 12 in IT/computer science, seven in engineering and five in science.

At the same time, the University is working on methods for allowing online students who work full-time to apply their experience in lieu of some required courses, Wooden said during a session on STEM Happenings at GCU.

The Bachelor of Science in Information Technology with an Emphasis on Cybersecurity is GCU’s first step in offering a degree that provides unique, hands-on training and will help transform Arizona into a hot spot for cybersecurity professionals, Farinacci said.

“Thirty years ago, we had security guards to protect us. Today, we need more than security guards because hackers are breaking in and stealing our identification, our information and our intellectual property, and they do it without walking a foot outside their homes,” he said.

Information system analysts are among the most sought after job candidates in the workforce today. Consider these 2015 statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• Arizona had the fifth-highest concentration of cybersecurity jobs.
• The average information security analyst annual salary in the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metropolitan region was $81,830.
• The average salary nationally was $88,890 compared with $79,390 for all computer occupations and $35,540 for all jobs.
• And the prospects continue to brighten. Between 2014 and 2024, cybersecurity employment is expected to rise 18 percent nationally compared with 12 percent in all computer occupations and 7 percent in all occupations.

“The need for well-prepared information technology and cybersecurity experts is growing exponentially,” GCU President Brian Mueller said. “It is GCU’s vision to provide a premier educational experience and exceptional career preparation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.”

Additionally, Farinacci and Dr. Heather Monthie, CSET assistant dean, are working on a head-spinning number of fronts to enrich and complement the University’s emphasis on cybersecurity.

For example, this year GCU partnered with the Arizona Cyber Threat Response Alliance (ACTRA), a nonprofit group that collaborates with the FBI, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to name a few.

The partnership gives GCU’s cybersecurity students the advantage of practicing methodologies and strategies on ACTRA’s live cyberwarfare range, Farinacci said. And Farinacci is instructing in the ACTRA Cybersecurity Academy, a boot camp for handling real-world security events and threats.

Cyber Lopes on the horizon

Other initiatives include developing a web-based cyber defense center, Cyber Lopes, that likely will go online this summer, and creating an e-learn cybersecurity boot camp.

“This is GCU’s attempt to put our foot in the door,” Farinacci said. “Now we can walk through the door and talk the talk.”

Cybersecurity students will branch out to study cyber operations planning and execution, cybercrime and cyber law and also utilize the live cyberwarfare range, among other options, Farinacci said.

One new student is freshman Morgan Melton, who switched to the cybersecurity degree and said he knows other ground students who plan to enroll.

“I have a passion for learning about networks,” said Melton, a CSET student worker. “I want to work for a large bank or a corporation and test their security to make the world a better place.”

That the program is new is an advantage because it is flexible and allows students to dig deep.

“My skills will go outside the normal program that other students at other schools will have,” he said.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or @laurie.merrill@gcu.edu.

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Six of Arizona’s Chief Science Officers take a selfie in front of the White House — which invited them to discuss the program.

By Laurie Merrill
GCU News Bureau

When it comes to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) initiatives in Arizona, Grand Canyon University is frequently at the forefront.

So it’s only fitting that GCU’s Strategic Educational Alliances department should become a driving force behind the Chief Science Officers (CSO) program in Arizona’s high schools and middle schools.

If this sounds like Star Trek (Mr. Spock was, after all, chief science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise), it’s because these students advocate for STEM education at their schools, essentially becoming “the voice” of STEM, said Amanda Hughens, GCU’s K-12 STEM outreach manager.

Amanda Hughens, right, GCU’s K-12 STEM outreach manager, and Dr. Jeremy Babendure, head of the Arizona SciTech Festival Initiative, posed in the White House.

The first year was so successful, Hughens said, that a group of six of the state’s 140 chief science officers — all of whom were elected by classmates — was invited to talk with lawmakers in Washington D.C. last month.

The result: A STEM program that started in Arizona may become a national model.

“The White House Office for Science and Technology heard about CSOs and wanted to learn more,” said Hughens, an educator, professional development specialist and advocate for STEM programs at GCU and K-12. “They see this as a national initiative.”

The White House science and technology office has asked that the initiative spread to all 50 states as early as November, Hughens said. California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and others are boarding the train.

CSOs are gaining in numbers

It’s an initiative that is spreading rapidly, growing from 140 participants in Arizona during 2015-2016 to more than 240 after elections were held this spring for the 2016-2017 year, Hughens said.

CSOs are also helping transform the typical “nerd” and “geek” stereotype of students who excel at science and math.

“These are really some of the cooler kids at school,” said Hughens.

The program was launched in 2015 by the Annual Arizona SciTech Festival Initiative, headed by executive director Dr. Jeremy Babendure. GCU became a program sponsor, supported the Washington D.C. trip and is hosting the CSO Summer Institute 2016 for more than 200 participants, including lawmakers, representatives from several states and White House officials.

Talking to national officials in Washington D.C., the six Chief Science Officers made an impression.

CSOs are science ambassadors who coordinate speakers, field trips and projects that will infuse excitement about STEM curriculum. They organize science cafes, family science nights and hands-on displays to entice youngsters about the “magic” of science, Hughens said.

“It’s taking the scientific principles of things like magnetism and making that mystery into something really cool and brilliant,” she said.

CSOs meet with elected officials to advocate for science education and also meet as a “cabinet.” At the same time, a community or business “Jedi” (yes, a Star Wars reference this time) mentors them, Hughens said.

Hughens said the idea is for science program advocacy to come from the ground up and the group most affected: the students themselves.

Warm Washington welcome

The CSOs spoke to area legislators and attracted the attention of U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who urged them to visit Washington D.C. to spread the word.

Accompanied by several adults, including Hughens —who acquired polo shirts and bags for the group — six of the students departed May 16 for the nation’s capital. GCU sponsored four of them.

There, the CSOs:

• Held a Congressional briefing with lawmakers from half a dozen states.
• Met individually with U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, U.S. reps Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and personnel from the offices of U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ).
• Met with White House Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith and John Holdren, assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology and with officials from NASA and the Department of Energy.
• Toured Marine Corps Base Quantico, visited Hogan’s Alley and saw various FBI training facilities.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or laurie.merrill@gcu.edu. 

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Photos by Laurie Merrill and Kathryn Scott
GCU News Bureau

Eight musical students are making their own instruments during Amp Up! Electric Guitars and STEM, one of this summer’s STEM camps held at GCU. On Wednesday, they got to tour the GCU recording studio with recording studio manager, Eric Johnson.

“It’s fascinating looking at at all the science and engineering and math that goes into music,” said Amanda Hughens, GCU’s K-12 STEM outreach manager. “The thing I like best about STEM is that it’s ‘life done correctly.’ ”

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Connor Lapham, a Metropolitan Arts Institute junior, displays the body of the guitar he has sanded, waxed, sealed and dyed in GCU’s Amp Up summer STEM camp.

Story and Photos by Laurie Merrill
GCU News Bureau

Connor Lapham took a moment to glance up from the guitar he is building.

Lapham shows the next stage of building his guitar.

Lapham, a junior at the Metropolitan Arts Institute in Phoenix, has sanded, sealed and dyed the solid body of his brown electric guitar.

He had several steps to go before plugging in his new instrument and playing it, but by the time camp ended today he and the other camp participants will have constructed their own, hand-made guitars.

“I always wanted to mess with guitars, and now I get to learn how they are put together,” said Nicholas Marcantonio, an Arcadia High School senior. “It’s really fun.”

Lapham and Marcantonio are among the students enrolled in Amp Up! Electric Guitars and STEM, one of the GCU summer camps that integrates STEM disciplines into daily lives.

“It’s fascinating looking at all the science and engineering and math that goes into music,” Amanda Hughens, GCU’s K-12 STEM outreach manager, said Wednesday during a tour of GCU’s recording studio.  “The thing I like best about STEM is that it’s ‘life done correctly.’ ”

Recording Studio Manager Eric Johnson, with his back to the camera, gives STEM campers a tour of the studio.

Students from the Robots, Web Design and Gaming summer camp joined the guitar-builders for a tour of one of GCU’s newest treasures, the state-of-the art, high-tech recording studio where the Canyon Worship 2016 album was recently produced.

Some hoped to return to the studio with their new guitars.

But first, more building was on the agenda. Campers were planning to complete the guitar arms that contain the tuning pegs, add strings and install electronics.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or laurie.merrill@gcu.edu. 

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Some of the 200 Chief Science Officers from junior and senior high schools visit GCU for a training institute.

Story and photos by Laurie Merrill
GCU News Bureau

Antelope Gym was packed Monday morning with students from junior high and high schools from across Arizona, all with one main thing in common.

“How many of you like science?” asked Dr. Jeremy Babendure, executive director of Arizona SciTech.

Without hesitation, every hand shot up in the air.

GCU Provost Dr. Hank Radda tells the Chief Science Officers that GCU embraces science, technology, engineering and math.

As if this didn’t display enough enthusiasm, a few minutes later the crowd was cheering “CSO! CSO!” and doing the wave.

So began the three-day Chief Science Officer (CSO) Training Institute, hosted by GCU.

These several hundred students all were elected by their classmates to the role of CSO at their schools. They are science ambassadors who coordinate speakers, field trips and projects that will infuse excitement about the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum.

GCU Provost Dr. Hank Radda warmly welcomed the group and spoke of the growing number of STEM degrees at GCU.

“The sciences are very important to us,” Radda said. “We know that’s where the jobs are.”

He congratulated the CSOs in stepping up to their positions, which he said are likely to help them get jobs. In building the STEM curriculum, GCU educators solicited information from some of the University’s 100 industry partners.

Dr. Jeremy Babendure is executive director of Arizona SciTech, which started the CSO program in 2015.

Industry members say they are are looking for people who have expertise but also have character. “Do you know how to get along with other people? Can you lead a team?” Radda said.

The institute is designed to immerse CSOs in activities ranging from leadership development and team building to hands-on science projects and speech writing.

“What we do in science is solve problems,” said Babendure, who heads the group that launched the CSO program in 2015. “We hope you’re going to be changing things at your school.”

He elicited another burst of excitement when he told them they are the only CSOs in the world at the moment, but White House and Congressional officials hope that the experiment that has been so successful in Arizona will spread across the nation.

CSOs were excited enough to do the wave.

Representatives from other states are observing the institute for ideas on how to start the program.

Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and the Assistant to the President, is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at lunch Wednesday.

Benjamin Almanza, a junior at Betty H. Fairfax High School in Phoenix, was as eager to begin the sessions as he was to run for his CSO post. There are no science clubs at his high school, and he wants to make a difference.

“I love science, and when I heard about this, I automatically jumped,” he said.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or laurie.merrill@gcu.edu. 

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Chief Science Officers visiting GCU this week got a great team-building experience inventing a game controller for a girl with special needs.

Story and photos by Laurie Merrill
GCU News Bureau

Class was over, but these boys and girls didn’t budge. They sat, hunched over their tables, their imaginations firing on all cylinders as they focused their attention on their team project: making a game controller for a girl with special needs.

“I wish we could stay here so we could finish it,” said Ben Slater, a seventh grader from Canyon Breeze School in Avondale.

Each team used a kit to build a circuit board with special features.

Like the other 200 students from across Arizona who are visiting Grand Canyon University this week, Slater is a Chief Science Officer (CSO), a student elected by his peers to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education at his school.

The CSOs are attending a three-day Chief Science Officer Training Institute at GCU that features a packed schedule of activities, speakers and classes designed to strengthen their abilities as team members, leaders and school science ambassadors.

Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President, is scheduled to be the keynote speaker Wednesday, and Bob Witwer, vice president of advanced technology for Honeywell Aerospace, spoke Tuesday.

Slater and about nine other students were in the “The Art of Making” session taught by Al Pajak with the Arizona Science Center and Mary Mueller, a State Farm Insurance community mentor.

Their assignment, Pajak said, was to build a remote control for an 8-year-old girl named Hayden who was born with defects and can’t use her left arm.

Using circuit boards, supplies, plenty of imagination and, perhaps most important, empathy, two teams of students set to work to design a game controller so that Hayden could have fun playing games with her family.

The students also learned that empathy can be the inspiration of invention.

“You could have a single joy stick,” Slater said. “And you could make the controller for her lap.”

Dhruv Khosla, a Rancho Solano 10th grader, suggested they add an extension to compensate.

They were thinking broadly, bouncing ideas off one another to trigger thoughts they might not have had apart from the team, a concept Witwer had discussed earlier during the lunch speech.

“Dialog occurs when a group of people gets together and suspends certainty in their own beliefs and they reach a level of thought they had never had,” Witwer said, quoting another educator.

After the students reluctantly left behind their partially built game controllers, Khosla said the class was effective.

“I think it was a lot of fun,” he said. “It was a fun way to show the engineering design process and it was a fun way for us to interact.’’

Slater said he thought they could have built Hayden’s controller if they had another half-hour, but he nonetheless appreciated the class.

“You’re helping other people with designs that you built,” he said.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or laurie.merrill@gcu.edu. 

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Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Adviser to the President, addresses the Chief Science Officers on Wednesday at GCU.

Story by Laurie Merrill
Photos by Darryl Webb
GCU News Bureau

With a bounce in her step and a grin on her face, Megan Smith, the U.S. Chief Technology officer and adviser to the President, congratulated some 200 Chief Science Officers gathered in Grand Canyon University’s Antelope Gym on Wednesday.

“The president is so proud of you guys,” said Smith, addressing the  junior high school and high school students from across Arizona on the final day of Chief Science Officer Training Institute. “The White House is so proud of you.”

Smith said Arizona’s program could become a model for the rest of the country.

Smith and two other White House officials — Marc Wynne of the president’s Leadership Development Program and Andrew Coy, a senior adviser — traveled to GCU to meet the young men and women who were elected by their classmates to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) at their schools.

“We want to congratulate you for getting this started in Arizona,” Smith said.

Officials from Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Washington, Oregon and New York were also at GCU to gather information about starting the program in their states and planned to meet with Smith later in the day.

GCU is a sponsor of the Arizona CSO program. It was launched in 2015 by Arizona SciTech, headed by executive director Dr. Jeremy Babendure. This school year marks the second year of the initiative.

In her remarks, Smith praised Babendure; Susan Farretta, the Arizona Technology Council director of educational initiatives; and program sponsors for setting the pace for the rest of the nation.

“They figured out a model that could be really helpful to the future of country,” Smith told the students. “You guys are the founders of CSOs.”

Smith provided examples of creative solutions to some of the world’s problems: how a lawyer shortage in Uganda was solved by teaching the law to prisoners, how deforestation was eased by drones that plant trees in the ground, and how a ship that was retrofitted into a maker space with 3D printers travels to school-age children from Peru to Brazil.

“Everything around you has been designed and made. You can be the ones who design and make things,” Smith said.

She suggested events they could organize at their schools, such as coding boot camps and hack-a-thons.

She also challenged the CSOs to reverse the bad rap that STEM subjects get. They are not too hard, too dull or just for boys, she said.

“One of the things we’ve been struggling with as a country is how to make everyone feel powerful,” Smith said.

During a question-and-answer portion, a student asked Smith about her highest hopes for CSOs.

CSOs are in a position to empower others, she said, and she hopes they spread confidence, creativity, collaboration, caring, kindness and intensity.

Contact Laurie Merrill at (602) 639-6511 or laurie.merrill@gcu.edu. 

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Story by Laurie Merrill
Photos by Darryl Webb
GCU News Bureau

Grand Canyon University engineering students this fall will experience a profusion of changes, ranging from the classes they take to where — and how — they take them.

In just the second year that GCU has offered degrees in biomedical, mechanical and electrical engineering, the program has expanded so quickly that the number of  mechanical engineering enrollees has more than doubled and the biomedical and electrical engineering students has surged by about 25 percent.

GCU’s Dr. Michael Sheller holds a robotic hand prototype at Escape Velocity Mechanical Design in
Phoenix. Students will program the hands in a team project that teaches the basics of electrical
circuitry and engineering principles and introduces the impact of science on humanity.

Ten new faculty members were hired over the summer to offer a curriculum that stresses a hands-on learning style versus a traditional lecture format.

But perhaps the most obvious change is the most enormous: the new 170,000-square-foot College of Science, Engineering and Technology building — still under construction — that is expected to be fully operational by January.

The growth of GCU’s engineering program is a pivotal part of the University’s plan to continue boosting economic growth by attracting Arizona businesses that hire employees highly trained in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

GCU President Brian Mueller said at last week’s all-employee meeting that he expects that in the coming years, 70 percent of the University’s students will graduate with STEM degrees.

“We are going to educate the best engineers in the world,” Mueller said.

All of GCU’s STEM programs — biology, chemistry, exercise science, information technology and computer science — are expanding, but the engineering programs will occupy the larger wing of the new building.

The 83,000-square-foot, east-west wing of the structure will be engineering central, with all four floors dedicated to classroom instruction, labs and shops that offer welding, lathes, presses, paint, sheet metal working and more.

Students experimenting in an engineering lab.

Also under construction are new courses with an innovative curriculum, said Dr. Michael Sheller, the CSET associate dean.

“I’m excited to have faculty put together courses,” Sheller said. “We are embracing a very different model for teaching engineering.”

Sheller was speaking last week in an office stacked high with moving boxes. He and other CSET faculty are moving into the north-south wing of the new building this week. That wing of the building is expected to be open before school starts.

At the core of the new learning style Sheller is developing is immediate application of information.

Many engineering classes consist largely of professors talking with time set aside for lab experiments.

That will change with the new curriculum. During the first five minutes of a class, a professor will introduce a concept, principle or fact. Then during the next 10-15 minutes, students will apply it in a “mini-lab.” This is repeated throughout the class, Sheller said.

“It’s kind of like a full lab interspersed with a lecture,” Sheller said.

As far as offering new programs, Sheller has proposed one program with four emphases, though he is awaiting approval on two of the emphases. The two current programs are a B.S. in engineering with emphasis on management and B.S. in engineering with emphasis on robotics.

“There’s lots and lots of courses being developed right now,” Sheller said.

The biomedical engineering curriculum will offer new classes such as advanced biomedical and devices and an introduction to biomechanics.

Sheller said that by the fall of 2017, when GCU’s first engineering students start their junior year, “we will have developed the new curriculum.”

­

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By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau

The success of the Integration of Faith, Learning and Work initiative at Grand Canyon University has been the result of strong faculty participation, so much so that they now have a key role in running it.

Dr. Jason Hiles, dean of the College of Theology, decided earlier this year to form a task force to help plan and operate the program, which includes six “Lunch and Learns” for faculty during the school year.

Dr. Jason Hiles, dean of the College of Theology, formed a faculty task force to help him plan and execute the popular “Lunch and Learns,” the centerpiece of the Integration of Faith, Learning and Work initiative at GCU. (Photo by Darryl Webb)

Beginning in March, the task force — which includes a representative from each college — met regularly to plan the 2016-17 overall theme and individual topics, conduct and evaluate a faculty survey, and get more individual feedback from peers.

“Anything related to integration of faith in this whole process, if he communicates at the meeting, then we would be collaborating at the college level with our dean and our fellow faculty and seeing that it is being implemented,” said one of the eight task force members, Dr. Daisy Savarirajan of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology.

“Since we are very much moving around with other faculty, we know what the concerns are and what the challenges are. We’re kind of mediating between the deans and the faculty, which is a pretty responsible job.”

Some of the results of the group’s meetings: This year’s theme is “Things That Really Matter,” and each session — starting with the first one at 11:15 a.m. Friday in Howerton Hall — will feature two presenters from two different colleges rather than one and a separate discussion led by panelists, which on Friday will include students as well as faculty.

Hiles wraps up each session with a talk on a related topic. The complete schedule of topics and presenters is listed below, and lunch is provided.

One of the first things the task force did last spring was design and conduct an IFLW workshop/retreat before faculty members left for the break.

“We had this whole day where it was our faculty who led the songs, prayer and meditation from the Bible,” Savarirajan said. “We were the ones who did our own getting into the Bible, seeing how we find relevant passages that apply to our teaching of the sciences.

“It was a very big success, and the feedback I got from the faculty was that they just loved it — it was the best retreat they have experienced so far.”

Joshua Danaher

Hiles also met with the task force to examine GCU’s doctrinal statement and explore how the history of Christianity fit with what the University is trying to accomplish.

Then there was the survey. Another member of the task force, Joshua Danaher of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, said it demonstrated why the group is important. In addition to the written survey, task force members also met one-on-one with other faculty in their college.

“We have a better understanding of, just from informal conversations, the feedback that other faculty have with the initiative,” he said. “We can get more specific feedback from our colleagues. That’s already shaped what we’re going to do with the Lunch and Learns.”

Toward the end of the summer break, Savarirajan met with a group of scientists who are committed Christians. “Everything that I learned, I’m going to impart it to my classes,” she said.

That’s the main reason for the IFLW, of course. And that’s the whole point of this year’s sessions.

“Let’s try to determine what really matters, what we’re doing together and how we can get it to our students,” Hiles said.

Contact Rick Vacek at (602) 639-8203 or rick.vacek@gcu.edu.

LUNCH AND LEARN SCHEDULE

SEPT. 16: “THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER”

Description: The first lunch and learn offering of the fall will set the stage for the entire academic year. This session interacts with Jesus’ teaching that we should not live “by bread alone” and explores the things that really matter to God.

Faculty presentation: Dr. Moronke Oke, Colangelo College of Business (CCOB) and Joshua Danaher, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS)

Panel participants: CCOB, CHSS and selected students

Theological perspective (Dr. Jason Hiles): Not by bread alone (Luke 4)

OCT. 21: “CHRISTIAN EDUCATION”

Description: Education represents a perennial “hot button” topic because it is an important means of impressing key values on the next generation and setting the trajectory for our society’s future. This session will discuss the significance of forming students’ hearts and minds from a Christian perspective.

Introduction: Dr. Wayne Schmidt, College of Doctoral Studies (CDS)

Faculty presentation: College of Science, Engineering and Techonology (CSET) and Curriculum Design and Development (CDD)

Panel participants: CSET, CDD, College of Education (COE)

Theological perspective (Hiles): A house built to last (Luke 6)

NOV. 18: “THE CHRISTIAN LIFE”

Description: Conversations about faith often turn toward beliefs, doctrines and worldview commitments, but a genuinely Biblical faith results in a wonderfully unique style of life. This session will explore some of the practical differences that the Christian worldview makes when one truly follows Jesus.

Faculty presentation: COE and College of Nursing and Health Care Professions (CONHCP)

Panel participants: COE, CONHCP, CDS

Theological perspective (Hiles): Following Jesus (Luke 5)

JAN. 13:  “CHRISTIAN LOVE”

Description: “Love” is an incredibly flexible term used to describe feelings as different as loyalty to a football team (“I love the Cardinals”), enjoyment of food (“I love pizza”) and affection for another (“I love my spouse”). But the Bible insists that Christian love is a particular sort of love rooted in a deep and absolute commitment to the God who lovingly made us in his image. This session will consider how this kind of love has the power to change everything.

Faculty presentation: CDS, College of Fine Arts and Production (COFAP)

Panel participants: COE, CSET and College of Theology

Theological perspective (Hiles): Loving our enemies (Luke 6)

FEB. 17: “JESUS AT THE CENTER”

Description: The modern world often seems confusing, conflicted and perhaps even a little disappointing. Many different things vie for our attention and energy, but, in the end, only a few things really matter. Jesus does not offer a return to simpler days when things were better. Instead, He gently and lovingly offers the hope of a life that is centered on what really matters.

Faculty presentation: COFAP, CHSS

Panel participants: COFAP, CHSS, COT

Theological Perspective (Hiles): Who is Jesus, exactly? (Luke 9)

MARCH 17: “FOLLOWING JESUS”

Description: Imagine a world in which everyone lived and loved as Jesus did. It would be absolutely incredible to inhabit a world in which people truly loved one another and, indeed, even loved their enemies. Jesus was willing to pay a high price to change the world, and He called others to follow him in this way of life. The final Lunch and Learn of the year takes a close look at what it takes to follow Jesus as he leads us to take hold of the purpose God has for each of our lives.

Faculty presentation: CCOB, CSET

Panel participants: CCOB, CSET, CHSS

Theological perspective (Hiles): The cross of Christ (Luke 9)

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