Outreach

GCU baseball players didn’t hesitate delaying their trips home for the holidays so they could help St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance on Super Saturday. The team spent six hours at the Moon Valley Safeway collecting turkeys, nonperishable food and cash donations for the nonprofit organization, which expects more than 12,000 families to stop by today, Tuesday and Wednesday to pick up turkeys and other Thanksgiving meal items. “I could have left Thursday. But I had this; this is important,” said pitcher Cole Hoskins, who was planning to hit the road after his volunteer shift for a five-hour drive back home to Anaheim, Calif., for the holiday. The team collected more than $2,080 and 81 turkeys for SMFBA.

GCU in 2015 partnered with Habitat for Humanity to transform the Canyon Corridor. In those five years, the organizations have completed 606 repairs on 263 homes, and GCU and Grand Canyon Education employees have contributed more than $2.7 million to Habitat through Allocate to Elevate. GCU was honored Wednesday with the Spirit of Philanthropy Award by the Greater Arizona Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals for its work with Habitat, which nominated the University for the honor.

“Glorious Frequencies: Music, Physics and Engineering” “Lazy or Lupus? Is My Tiredness Pathological?” and “The Robots are Coming!” were just some of the topics high school juniors and seniors, as well as community college students, explored at the annual Health Sciences, Engineering and Technology Day on Thursday. More than 1,100 high school and community college students RSVP’d to attend HSET Day, when students not only toured DNA, engineering, cadaver and nursing labs but sat in on talks by professionals in the field and visited with GCU STEM students. The event was presented by the Marketing Department’s ground event planning team.

It’s already Nov. 1, which means that not only are Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner, but GCU is readying for the season of giving with its Give With Purpose Turkey Drive campaign. The campaign, which launched today, will run through Nov. 22 — that’s one more week than past years, meaning more time to donate to the campaign’s featured charity, St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance.

Brian Mucyo’s Senior year at GCU is jam-packed with responsibilities connected to his passions, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Mucyo was recently selected as the National Federation of the Blind of Arizona’s Award and scholarship recipient, as well as taking a seat on the Arizona Association of Blind Students board. October is meet the blind month and Mucyo hopes to help spread awareness of issues that affect people with visual impairments. “The thing that makes this award kind of special to me is that it’s an award where sure, I’m being recognized for the things I do, the effort I put into school and the passion I have for everything that I do but it’s not one of those awards that I’ll be getting where it kind of leads with ‘despite the fact that he’s blind these are all the things he’s doing and that’s so incredible that’s why we’re giving it to him.’” Mucyo said. “To me I feel like it’s affirming that what makes me special isn’t that I’m blind and somehow overcame it, no it’s just who I am as a person.”

GCU News Bureau GCU had a strong presence at the recent Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (ALAS) National Education Forum in Orlando, Fla. Key developments to note:  ● GCU has signed a CEP participant agreement through the K12 Educational Development Department with ALAS because our mission and vision so closely aligns to support underrepresented populations and show how higher education is possible for students of all socioeconomic statuses. ● GCU will award scholarships to administrators who join our advanced master’s and doctoral programs. ● GCU will serve as host for the ALAS Superintendent Leadership Academy in January 2020 and the ALAS State Affiliates Conference in March 2020, which will bring school district superintendents and administrators from all parts of the country to campus.

Two years ago, the Cartwright Community Garden, which sits adjacent to Bret R. Tarver Elementary School and Marc T. Atkinson Middle School, was just an empty lot where a fire destroyed plans for a garden — and destroyed a mobile garden dubbed Gus the Garden Bus. Phoenix Fire Captain Austin Moreland, a GCU alum and former baseball player, couldn’t just let those plans fall by the wayside and enlisted the help of the community to restore the garden and create a new Gus the Garden Bus. The memorial garden was the site Saturday for the city of Phoenix’s Food Day and the Junior League of Phoenix’s Healthfest. GCU was there, with Canyon 49 Executive Sous Chef Michael Willison and members of the men’s baseball team, Milwaukee Brewers and the Learning Lounge to help inspire people to change the way they look at food.

Serve the City has done so much in recent years to help the neighborhood around the University, but there was a new twist Saturday. One of the homeowners is a recent GCU graduate and said something that you hear from a lot of students — they don’t want to leave.

The GCU men’s and women’s basketball teams, Cheer team, Thundering Heard Pep Band and Thunder had a ball Thursday on their annual trip to Paul’s Car Wash, the north Phoenix event that benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters. For the basketball players, it was a rare opportunity to turn those teams into one. “It’s pretty fun to be together as a whole family,” sophomore guard Mariah Mitchell said.

The Association of Christian Schools International’s first international job fair at GCU brought representatives from 28 countries to campus Tuesday. “We have a variety of job fairs and career fairs, but mostly they’re local and national. This is opening up the door in a large way to the number of professions in that international sphere,” said Dr. Tacy Ashby, Senior Vice President of K12 Educational Development. “The College of Education is really excited about this because it affords incredible ministry opportunities while allowing their students the opportunity to serve in Christian schools abroad.”