Commuter Life

The February 2020 issue of GCU Magazine will be a keepsake for students, faculty, staff and alumni. The special dedication to GCU’s stunning transformation in the last 10 years includes stories, photos and videos covering every aspect of this remarkable story — academics, spiritual life, campus life, community outreach, athletics, online education and alumni — plus President Brian Mueller’s personal thoughts about what it has meant to him. Here’s the digital version.

Children often have a lot in common with their parents, but Sydney Teerink and Tori Triguero now have one more thing in common with their parents. Teerink and her mother, GCE employee Ra’Lene, as well as Triguero and her father, Dan, can all now call themselves 2019 GCU graduates.

It’s not every day that a university accepts the incoming application of a 15-year-old applicant, but Shreya Muthu isn’t your everyday student. Muthu skipped both eighth grade and her sophomore year of high school and will attend GCU for the fall semester. “I’m super excited, I love the atmosphere here and I’m excited to see the opportunities that it brings me,” she said.

Students are the top priority at GCU, of course, but that ideal is shown in many ways. One of them is web shows featuring students talking about their time at the University, and the latest one is “Living as Lopes,” which aims to give current and prospective students insights into the many activities on campus. “I feel like it’s a really cool opportunity because it shows our genuine lives, but it also shows that we’re all so different and unique and we all love such different things that it just shows from different perspectives what you can do, what the options are,” said Hailey-James Hines, one of several “Living as Lopes” cast members.

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.

The Commuter Lounge is one of the busiest places on the Grand Canyon University campus during summer school, but the students who use it love its more relaxed ambiance this time of year. As Ruben Garcia said, “I have more time to talk to some of the students I see in the lounge. Now that it is summer, we dive and delve.’’

While the men’s soccer team had a goal — to defeat Oral Roberts University — some families who attended Friday night’s game had a second goal: to offer support to families battling cancer. The Children’s Cancer Network was at the game to kick off its eighth annual Run to Fight Children’s Cancer.

Grand Canyon University supports initiatives that provide legal clarity for DACA students. There are 300-400 DACA students currently on our campus and we will continue to support and embrace them as they pursue their education and build a better future for themselves and their families.

Here’s a family that has taken devotion to Grand Canyon University to a new level: Not only does Renee Taillon work and study at GCU, so do her three children — twins Christian and Jared and daughter Kirie. “We really do bleed purple in our family,” Renee said.

This year’s Canyon Challenge, scheduled for Thursday afternoon at GCU Arena, features five mission-driven finalists competing for the $15,000 in prize money. Storage Together, which won an international competition in Barcelona last fall, is among the competitors.