GCU Magazine

November 2025

Trading up

Weston Smith of Lux Precision Manufacturing, a working aerospace machine shop on campus, is part of what many hope will be a new age of manufacturing in America. But he and GCU also are focused on educating the next generation of machinists and engineers.

Broadcast boom

GCU Athletics hit an all-time high of four nationally televised regular-season games last season. But joining the Mountain West Conference this year means big things, including making the leap to 13 nationally televised games this season on Fox, FS1 and CBS Sports Network.

Circling back

To put more teachers in the classroom, here's an idea: Identify K-12 students as early as junior high age who might want to become teachers, get them to college, return them to their old schools to student teach, then have them take over what were once their own classrooms as full-time teachers. That's what GCU's RISE 360 Scholarship aims to do.

Transformative gift

The Kern Family Foundation did something impactful three years ago when it granted GCU $2.3 million, which was used to establish the Canyon Center for Character Education. But now, with a new $10.7 million Kern gift, the university is going even bigger, embarking on a five-year program to cultivate Christian character education in its 10 colleges, student life and athletics.

CityServe Tech

When it opened four years ago, GCU CityServe helped the community by distributing millions of dollars of household goods and other necessities to those who need them. Now the outreach ministry is doing even more through CityServe Tech, which refurbishes technology, such as laptops and e-bikes, and gives them a second life.

Silver, gold and purple

Black Friday shopping? How about GCU purple shopping? From quarter-zips at the Lope Shop, to Noggin Boss hats and Chewk's Cookies from alumni-owned businesses, to tickets to Ethington Theatre's season of plays, it's easy to find that perfectly purple present.

Making a connection

A pair of online professors didn't want to be just faceless entities on a laptop. Jesse Prather and David Larson wanted their students to know that they're real people and helped two of those students with words of encouragement.

The right cut

After the pandemic, everyone was hungering for social interaction, something GCU alumna Abigail Schlesinger discovered when her Charcuterie Collective business started to boom.