Academics

Eighty GCU students are in the class room already, gaining valuable experience by teaching lessons in math, science, social studies and art at nearby Westwood Elementary for students from preschool through Grade 3.

The largest Family Weekend in GCU history runs Friday through Sunday and is chock full of activities. Here is a partial list: Chapel, performances of Macbeth, competitive and casual golf at the GCU Golf Course, Parent Hospitality in Thunder Alley, a showing of “Incredibles2” on the Grove Lawn, performances by students from the College of Fine Arts and Production, performances by Spirit teams, competitive games or matches by the softball, men’s soccer, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s swimming teams, a Thunder Bolt shopping spree, family sand volleyball and a family service project.

The GCU Speech and Debate team finished in second-place on Sunday at the Aztec Invitational tournament at San Diego State University. Seniors Tommee Gleason, Xanthia Clow, and Keliann Nash won their respective events for speech competition, while the rest of the speech team placed in the top 6 in 13 out of 18 events. In Debate, seniors Grace Laidlaw and Matthew Calderwood won the varsity division and Ben Kuykendall and Joseph Madere finished second in the novice division

Increasingly, students at Grand Canyon University are adding minors. These extra concentrated courses give students deeper knowledge in a branch of their major, an increased skill set, a complement to their major, or a completely different academic area to explore.

Rice University synthetic organic chemist Dr. James Tour’s research spans from nanomachines that can drill into cells, such as cancer cells and super bacteria, and kill them, to graphene nanoribbons used in spinal cord repair. But his College of Science, Engineering and Technology One Foundation talk on Friday also focused on his faith and how it has played the biggest role in his life and his scientific success.

Grand Canyon University continues to be asked why it does not participate in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, which came out this month. President Brian Mueller issued a statement explaining the University’s decision: GCU believes that the rankings do not measure things that are important to the learning outcomes of students.

A mixture of logical debate strategies for pro-life arguments and anecdotes about the sanctity of human life highlighted GCU’s second annual Bioethics Conference, Human Dignity: Clash of World Views. One speaker refused to abort her daughter and refused to use stem cells from fetuses to aid her brain damaged son. Another speaker shared heartfelt steps to ease grief from the loss of a newborn.

The Academic Web Services Department has developed an an award-winning online resource that’s a one-stop shop for GCU students. In the year since its inception, the Student Success Center’s propietary search of more than 1,000 resources already has been used nearly 1 million times. Department Director Miranda Hildebrand says the website is useful to the point where her son’s high school teacher has been using it at the high school level.

By Theresa Smith GCU News Bureau In August, Dr. Andrea Alden, an assistant professor of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, published her first book, “Disorder in the Court: Morality, Myth, and the Insanity Defense.” To order the book, click here. In a behind-the-scenes peek at the writing of the book, GCU Today peppered Alden with questions about her first single-author book project: How long did it take to research and write the book? It feels like a really long time, and it has been almost a decade from start to finish. I started the project in 2010 when I was a Ph.D. student; it eventually became my doctoral dissertation, which I completed and defended in October of 2013. I was introduced to the editor of the Rhetoric, Law, and Humanities book series with the University of Alabama Press, Dr. Clarke Rountree, by a colleague who thought he might be interested in the manuscript. He asked for a formal proposal, which I spent three months drafting (it was five pages long, but I wanted it to be perfect). My proposal did the trick, and I was offered an advance contract in early 2015. I delivered the first draft of […]

The new master’s degrees in teaching content programs at GCU meet educators’ needs, enabling high school teachers to keep their jobs teaching dual enrollment and adjunct college professors to maintain their positions at colleges and universities. The programs were designed to dovetail with the standards imposed by the Higher Learning Commission, which oversees colleges and universities in 19 states, including Arizona.