Campus Life

GCU campus-based faculty, staff and students can take advantage of a texting service that will notify you in the event of a campus emergency. The service is free* and subscribers are only notified by text message when there is a security issue and when the issue has been resolved.

Want to win $500 to the GCU Bookstore? Then, put on your directors’ hat! Make the most creative video showing us your GCU Life! Write a song, tell a story, create a character, lip sync to your favorite jam around campus! Give us the best of your GCU Life!

Sophomore Elementary Education major Lyttia McManus started dancing in 7th grade. “I always wanted to move to the music but didn’t know how without looking nerdy,” she says. The cheerleader began taking jazz and hip-hop dance classes, and transferred to GCU from the University of Oregon to be part of the dance team. Her creativity spreads to drawing, painting, guitar and singing. The future teacher cannot imagine herself doing anything but teaching. “Fourth grade and I would love to be a dance and cheerleader coach.” In the meantime, she sticks to “dance and school and work.”

Join your fellow students on Thursday, December 2 at 6 p.m. for one of GCU’s annual holiday traditions – Hanging of the Green.

Ben Hewitt’s passion is literature. The 20-year-old published his first novel, I Toss Till Dawn, last year and is currently working on his third. It is a fictional take on a boy’s freshman year of college – he describes as a multi-character novel in the vein of Infinite Jest. Influenced by the likes of Kerouac, Dostoyevsky and Joyce, Hewitt has plans for a major in education and continuing his studies in a masters program. He’s focused on writing what inspires him, not necessarily what is popular. His advice for writers, “Even if you don’t feel like writing, you have to do it. Don’t ever give up on it.”

Patricia loves “doing life” with people; standing beside them through everything. “God made us relational individuals,” which is why she is an RA in the apartments. Life goal: Make an impact on students as a math teacher in a Title I school, showing them math is fun and relative to life. Through her own education struggles and physical battles, she realizes it’s harder to find the positive in life. But it’s still a good challenge. If God had a favorite color, according to Patricia, He’d choose the rainbow “because He never uses the same color twice.” Think about it.

The November 2010 issue of FYP is now available on campus and online. Check it out now, featuring KBCOB Dean Dr. Kevin Barksdale, freshman award-winning songwriter Casey Lee Smith, remarkable International online student Louise Tamutebi and more.

Though he plans on teaching in Greece and seeing the world, 19-year old sophomore Jacob Faber has never been on an airplane.  For now, he is content earning his bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education with a minor in English at GCU.  His favorite activities include painting and reading.  As an RA, it is Jacob’s duty to be relational and meet new people, which comes naturally to him.  You can often find him drinking an iced chai with a good book in his hands, like The Secret Life of Bee, or listening to the unusual sounds of the Canadian band, Tegan and Sara. Article by Krisann Valdez, Photos by Anissa Rowe.

GCU International Education Week included a host of events leading up to India and Nepal Night on Friday. The club transformed the Canyon Café into a cultural hotspot of India and Nepal.

A new campus group is ready to get in your face. The Freshman Class Council (FCC) is hosting its first event this weekend, so come dodge balls for free food. A dodgeball tournament will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday in the Student Recreation Center. Sign up in the ASGCU office in the Student Union.