Archive for January, 2010

A major beneficiary of GCU’s special Haitian relief fund is St. Damiens Pediatric Hospital, which is operated by Father Rick Frechette. Below, Father Rick provides a first-hand update on the conditions at the hospital and how your donations are helping the people of Haiti. Watch for future updates in this blog. Dear friends, We are very appreciative of your concern, prayers and support. Today the workers started to break up and haul off the tons of cement and iron that used to be our Fr. Wasson Center in Petionville. It is very important to us that this location is cleaned up and a new initiative is started there. I still admire the teams of 20 and 30 people who dug without stopping until they found Dr. Castro, Erin, and the bodies of Molly and Ryan. We are not sure what we will rebuild there yet, but for sure we will make a prominent memorial dedicated to Molly and Ryan, and to all of our Haitian staff and friends who died elsewhere in the tragedy. We estimate that we are missing about 20% of our Haitian staff. Some have gone to the United States, some are dead and some are still […]

January 27, 2010 To donate by phone: 888.201.8880 To contact us by mail: Friends of the Orphans 134 North LaSalle Street Suite 500 Chicago, IL 60602-1036 Mail-in donation form Note: Effective January 22, 2010, per the IRS, monetary donations for Haiti relief made between January 11 and March 1, 2010, may be deducted on 2009 tax returns. Read more. If you sponsor a child in the Dominican Republic or Haiti, please click here for a Godparent Update. Thank you to everyone for your support and gifts. Offering Immediate Help Thanks to the generosity of thousands of supporters, we have already provided Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos/Nos Petit Frères et Soeurs (NPH/NPFS) Haiti with: • Over $500,000 in cash • Medical supplies, food and water • Volunteer first responders Read More Celebrities Attend Special Fundraiser Russell Simmons (left) and others attended an event hosted by MODELINA and SPiN New York and led by Susan Sarandon on January 21. The event raised approximately $20,000. Read More Other events are being held around the country. Visit our Events page for the latest information. Helping Haiti’s Orphans With the support of Friends of the Orphans, NPH International is in the initial stages of a program to […]

As communicated last week, GCU has set up a link to collect monetary donations for Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (Friends of the Orphans) in Haiti, to provide disaster relief for earthquake victims. Senior management has announced that GCU will match all monies donated dollar for dollar up to a total of $25,000. Father Rick Frechette, the on-site National Director of the organization, was featured on ABC News discussing the country’s dire needs for medical care, food and shelter. Frechette runs the organization’s orphanage, educational/vocational programs, and St. Damien, the only free children’s hospital in Haiti. Injured children and adults have been pouring into the hospital since the earthquake struck on Tuesday. To watch this story, please go to http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/HaitiEarthquake/haiti-earthquake-doctors-fight-save-children/story?id=9570393 Please Note: The video does contain graphic images.) St. Damien has been sharing its medical supplies with other relief workers and facilities, and ran out of supplies Thursday night. If more supplies don’t arrive in Haiti soon, there will be a significant increase in the number of deaths, Frechette said. Other hospitals and relief workers in Haiti also report that they are overwhelmed by the number of victims and are desperate for additional support. Several GCU members have been personally affected, including […]

GCU Tech Support reports that some of the University’s eBooks are now compatible with the Nook – the Barnes & Noble brand eBook reader. The following instructions can help students download their electronic textbooks onto their Nook device. Download eBook from Canyon Connect. Check ‘Automatically sign me into this document in the future,’ then click file and save a copy of the eBook to your desktop. Turn on the Nook and hook up the USB cable. Click Start, choose My Computer and double click the Nook drive. Highlight the eBook file on the desktop and drag it to the Nook drive and drop it into the ‘my documents’ folder. Remove the USB cable from Nook and click the Nook menu button. Select ‘my library,’ then click ‘check for new content’ and click on ‘my documents’ to select the eBook. According to Tech Support, the Nook is currently the only eReader that is compatible with GCU eBooks. GCU does not endorse any eReader. GCU Tech Support is on Twitter – tweeting on a daily basis. Students and employees do not have to follow Tech Support, and can simply visit twitter.com/gcutechsupport for the latest information.

Online Bible Degree (www.onlinebibledegree.net) named GCU one of the best Christian colleges in the country. According to the site, “Studying a Christian degree is one of the best ways to be able to serve the community and the Lord. No matter what position in the Christian field you are interested in, there is a school that will help you attain the right skills and knowledge to have a good career. But you cannot study in just any school, in our opinion. It is still best to study in one of the best Christian colleges in the nation.” The site ranked GCU as number two in the nation. Online Bible Degree is a resource for students who are searching for opportunities to further their education in the fields of Christian studies.

The GCU Library is now available directly from ANGEL and allows students to conduct research through online journals, articles, books and databases. The online library also offers a special tool called OneSearch that allows students to search all databases and online books with a single search. The library databases are now easier than ever to access. Over the next two weeks changes will be implemented so students will no longer need an additional password to access the library databases. Once students have logged into MyGCU, they will have direct access to search all of the databases without logging in again. The library is committed to student success and now offers a chat service that has librarians available to answer library specific-questions Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Visit the library homepage at http://library.gcu.edu and click on the link in the upper left corner.

On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, a major earthquake struck 10 miles Southwest of Port-au-Prince. The people of Haiti have been in Grand Canyon University’s prayers and on our hearts since news of the devastating earthquake broke. We know that the families of several GCU members have been personally affected, including an employee and a student. One of our GCU enrollment managers and her husband have a direct relationship with Father Rick Frechette, on-site National Director in Haiti for Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (Friends of the Orphans), who runs an orphanage, educational/vocational programs, and the only free children’s hospital in Haiti. We have been in direct contact with Father Rick by satellite telephone. One way we can most efficiently help these victims immediately and in the longer term is through monetary donations. Fr. Rick assures us that 100 percent of the donations will go directly to the disaster victims served by his ministry. Senior management has announced that GCU will match all monies you donate dollar for dollar up to a total of $25,000. It is hoped that our community of students, employees and alumni will generously support this much-needed outreach effort. All donations are tax-deductible and will be very much appreciated […]

By Eva Lytle With our ever-evolving worlds of Internet communication – podcasts, tags, file swapping – we have learned new and radical ways to research, create and learn. These and other features such as blogging tools, uploading photos, videos and music, joining forums and writing comments, allow us to express our creativity and individuality. GCU supports all students with higher education success at The Center for Learning & Advancement (CLA). We recognize that there is a new generation of digital learners and have provided opportunities to use those skills through online tutoring and social networking. CLA views social networking as another opportunity to connect with our global university peers in an academic way. We use a social network called NING that offers peer-to-peer and faculty-to-peer support in certain content areas. You can connect in discussion forums to help one another with academic concepts or answer questions you have about your coursework content. There are currently two social groups and forums that provide Writing Lab and Math Lab atmospheres. Students and faculty can post questions, answers, examples and resources that contribute to learning. Once you have joined, you will find photos and bios about each tutor, as well as additional online […]

Leigh Darby Sloan, currently a Master’s in Educational Leadership student at GCU, was selected as Teacher of the Year for Dillon School District Three, Dillon, South Carolina. According to the Dillon Herald, Sloan is a native of West Columbia but presently resides in Hamer, SC. She has been employed by Dillon School District Three for the last six years. She moved into the position of Guidance Counselor of Latta Middle School during the 2003-04 school year. Mrs. Sloan received a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism in 1989. Since that time, she has received a Master’s Degree in Secondary Counseling and an Educational Specialist’s Degree in Elementary Counseling. Presently, she is pursuing a Master’s in Educational Leadership from Grand Canyon University. Being selected as District Teacher of Year qualifies Mrs. Sloan as a participant in the selection of South Carolina Teacher of the Year. The South Carolina Teacher of the Year Program is coordinated via the Division of Educator Quality & Leadership and is designed to honor those who are representative of the state’s many exceptional teachers. Sloan is married to Roger M. Sloan. They are the proud parents of three children; Darby, Maggie, and Carson.