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CANYON CORRIDOR CONNECTION
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GCU and Alhambra Partner to Create
Learning Lounge for Students
Educat ion
G
RAND CANYON UNIVERSITY has
launched a free tutoring program for
students at nearby Alhambra High
School in hopes of improving their math and
reading skills, as well as raising their confidence.
The groundbreaking program, dubbed
the Learning Lounge because of its relaxed
and inviting setting, is the centerpiece of
the university’s K-12 Outreach Program,
which developed from discussions between
Brian Mueller, GCU’s president and CEO,
and Dr. Kent Scribner, superintendent of the
Phoenix Union High School District.
The program is part of GCU’s continuing
mission to help its neighbors — the people and
businesses of its West Phoenix neighborhood
— thrive and prosper.
“Alhambra High is our hometown high
school and Brian recognized that we have to
do something to help,” said Dr. Joe Veres, a
former high school principal who is director
of K-12 Outreach at GCU. He said, ‘We don’t
want to be the strangers across the street,
we want to be partners with them. We are a
village raising a village.’ ”
GCU has hired and trained 30 student
tutors to work with underperforming high
school students weekdays from 3 p.m. to
8 p.m. More tutors will be hired as the
program expands, and other high schools will
be invited to participate in the future.
In early 2014, the Learning Lounge will
move to the bottom floor of a new four-story
classroom building being built on campus.
Alhambra High, less than a half-mile west
of GCU’s main campus, is home to 2,800
students. The Learning Lounge will initially
target freshmen from Alhambra, but the
program is open to all students.
In 2011, Alhambra was rated a “D” school
by the Arizona Department of Education
based on its students’ poor showing on the
Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards
(AIMS). Only 51 percent of Alhambra students
passed the reading portion of the AIMS test.
Since then, Alhambra hired Claudio Coria
as its principal and his initiatives have raised
the school’s status to the “C” level. Coria,
Veres and GCU believe Alhambra is on its
way to “A” school status.
“Alhambra has struggled because it is
located in a neighborhood that had been
neglected both politically and economically,”
Coria said. “But with GCU’s enormous
investment, we’re all buoyed. We don’t feel
alone anymore.”
One-on-one and group tutoring sessions
are available. The Learning Lounge features
12 tutoring offices, a computer lounge, more
than a dozen couches and overstuffed chairs,
four work stations and a cafe.
“The goal is to create a safe, relevant
environment with non-sterile-type classrooms,”
Veres said. “It will be a cool, hip place where
kids want to go after school. And once they get
here, we’ll help them with the academics.”
In her 20 years of teaching, Debbi Paiz,
one of four Alhambra teachers who trained
the tutors on the district’s curriculum, said
she never has seen a program like this. And
it couldn’t come at a better time, Paiz said,
because her students can’t succeed in the
world if they are reading at a fifth-grade level.
“You will see my students start to believe that
they can go on to school, at GCU or somewhere
else,” she said. “Right now, they think it’s a
fantasy, but we’re trying to break those walls
down, the economic, family and language
barriers that so many of them have to success.”
GCU had no shortage of students wanting
to become tutors at the lounge.
Senior Heather Shamburg, who plans to
become a youth minister, views education as a
primary need that GCU has a duty to provide
to Alhambra’s students.
“We are stepping out and not just building
people within our gates, but pouring ourselves
into the local community, and I think that’s
huge,” Shamburg said. “If you can’t mission
where you are, how can you mission elsewhere
in the world?”
■
For more information on the program,
contact GCU’s Director of K-12 Outreach,
Dr. Joe Veres, Ed.D., at 602-639-7971 or
Dr. Kent Scribner, Superintendent of
Phoenix Union High School District
Alhambra High School Lion and GCU Thunder with students
Brian Mueller, GCU’s president and CEO