Archive for July, 2018

The extreme heat of the Valley is here, and, in this week’s Fitness Facts, Connie Colbert tells how to lessen its impact.

In this week’s Mental Health vitamin, Dr. Deb explains that the streets signs amid us on our daily drives can be applied to our daily lives, helping guide us through life’s trials and tribulations.

GCU News Bureau College of Science, Engineering and Technology Professor Dr. Ramesh Velupillaimani presented his research findings this summer at the First European Congress on Photosynthesis Research, ePS-1 A Marcus Wallenberg Symposium, in Uppsala, Sweden. His research involved an ultrafast spectroscopic approach to study how green alga (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii), a miniature marvel, captures and converts solar energy into chemical energy. The ultimate goal of this research is the production of fuel directly from the energy of the sun, through natural or artificial photosynthesis, to help meet the world’s energy requirements. During the conference, Velupillaimani visited the homes of two world-famous scientists: Linnaeus Garden and Museum in Uppsala, where Carl Linnaeus lived and worked for almost 50 years — he developed the system for classifying and naming all living things; and the Mendel Museum of Masaryk University at Brno, Czech Republic, home of Gregor Mendel, who was an ordained priest and is known as the “Father of Genetics.”

One thousand kids served, 4,000 to go: The Back-to-School Clothing Drive’s New Clothes, New Beginnings kicked off Monday with GCU Day. Lopes were out in full support of the weeklong event, which donates new clothes and other school supplies to local children. It’s in its fifth year of turning GCU Arena into a seven-department shopping center where children walk through and pick out fresh attire.

This week’s edition of Antelope Intros features an engineer with an interesting background and a curriculum developer who says she was secretly married at a famous amusement park.

The four-year graduation rate for traditional students at Grand Canyon University has climbed to 58 percent for the 2014 cohort, while the graduation rate for online students sits at 65 percent. When the current management team assumed a leadership role at the University in 2008, those numbers were 40 and 48 percent, respectively. GCU will welcome approximately 7,200 new students to campus in August, bringing total enrollment to 20,500.

Grand Canyon University’s Pastor Tim Griffin at a recent employee Chapel said we never know who we might impact.

Nursing students have once again proven that GCU prepares them for the field. In the second quarter of 2018, the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions’ posted a 95.65 percent first-time pass rating on the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). That brings the College’s year-to-date rate to 92.86 percent — higher than the Arizona Board of Nursing’s year-to-date statewide average of 91.89. The NCLEX is administered to nursing students after they finish their pre-licensure program and is required before they can obtain their professional license and begin working as a Registered Nurse. The College’s Dean, Dr. Lisa Smith, attributed much of the success to the College’s NCLEX Success Manager, Amy Leach, and countless others who have devoted themselves to preparing students for the exam.

Grand Canyon University summer school students reveled in the opportunity to chat, munch on refreshments and channel their inner van Gogh at Paint Night, a Canyon Activities Board-sponsored event. The results were amazing: bold, colorful canvases, from black birds against a sunset to a baby blue narwhal to a prickly pear cactus and a giant pineapple.

In this week’s Fitness Facts, Connie Colbert breaks down sleep apnea — the symptoms, risk factors and treatments.