Outreach

A mission trip designed to connect the people in Cape Town, South Africa, to their local churches instead transformed the faith of 15 GCU students. By spending their spring break in the township of Khayelitsha, they were able to gain a new perspective on how God’s love is found in faith rather than worldly things. Students participated in prayer walks and home visits and assisted with the Vacation Bible School program. “We encountered people who literally had nothing and had some of the strongest faith in God that I’ve ever seen in my life,” said one of the leaders on the trip, Sydney Wastradowski.

It was a science Saturday for fourth- through eighth-graders, who spent their Saturday morning making oobleck — an odd substance that acts like a liquid and a solid — building simple motors powered by batteries, deciphering code and programming robots. The workshop was organized by GCU’s Robotics Club in collaboration with K-12 Educational Development. About two dozen Thunderbots volunteered to work with the young students and foster their appreciation of science, technology, engineering and math at the club’s STEM Bonanza.

The GCU Robotics Club overcame a lot of challenges in the 2018-19 competition season — challenges that haven’t slowed down the club one bit. The Thunderbots are gearing up for their STEM Bonanza workshop on Saturday for fourth- through eighth-graders. They’ll be making oobleck, a slime-type substance that somehow acts as a liquid and a solid, and they’ll be unraveling codes with wheel cyphers. The Thunderbots are also getting ready to volunteer at the big FIRST Robotics regional competition at GCU Arena April 5-6.

Washington High School senior Juan Ballez has watched his father struggle with mobility in his hand and, for years, wished there was a way he could help. Now, on the cusp of graduating, he thinks he knows a way — by becoming a biomedical engineer. His dream of helping people, like his father, came closer to fruition Tuesday at GCU, when he found out he was one of 43 students in the neighborhood surrounding GCU to receive the Students Inspiring Students scholarship. “It feels like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders,” said Juan after receiving the scholarship, which covers four years of tuition and books. “… I was determined. I was like, I can’t have my parents pay for it (college). I don’t want that burden on them.”

Adrianna Gavazzo could have celebrated her eighth birthday anywhere — at her favorite pizza place, at an arcade or at a theme park. Instead, she told her mom she wanted to have her party at Run to Fight Children’s Cancer. She and about 50 of her family and friends gathered at Run to Fight on Saturday on the GCU campus for cupcakes and to hit the 5K course in honor of Cavazzo, who is now cancer-free. She was just one of hundreds of runners and volunteers who participated in the event, the largest Arizona race of its kind bringing awareness to pediatric cancer.

Students volunteering with GCU’s Homeless Ministry ventured out recently to St. Vincent de Paul to serve the homeless, giving haircuts and donated clothes and washing individuals’ feet. “These people are our friends, and we are so grateful to have the chance to love and serve them in the name of Jesus,” said communications student Anders Carlson, who helps lead GCU’s Homeless Ministry team.

All the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare said, and GCU’s Theatre Department is taking that to heart with a new theatre troupe, Parables, which will leave the comforts of the GCU campus and take the show on the road, so to speak, to local schools in the community. What’s also different about this performance group, actually made up of two ensembles, is that its main focus is to spread the Gospel through theatre.

It was in 2017 when the Sports Medicine Club first volunteered for Run to Fight Children’s Cancer, offering to help with first aid. It also was the year spectator Perry Harris suffered a heart attack. He might not have survived if not for the quick thinking of Sports Medicine Club students and their advisors, and for nearby athletic trainers. Three years later and the University ran through its first Special Event Medical Emergency Exercise on Tuesday behind the GCU Innovation Center at the 27th Avenue complex. Ten departments trained for a medical emergency by running through a mock scenario. “A situation can occur at any time,” said Canyon Health and Wellness Clinic registered nurse Ian Youngblood, one of the mock scenario participants. Nurse practitioner Bethany Whitson added, “That’s why we do the drills.”

The College of Science, Engineering and Technology’s Forensic Science Department has done it again, this time with the addition of some new booths at Forensic Science Day on Tuesday. The forensic odontology booth showed the visiting high school students how to use bite marks to solve a crime, and there also were new fingerprinting and impression-evidence booths. The visitors also watched a live police dog demo, met with the Phoenix Police Department’s Special Assignment Unit and heard from guest speakers in the field.

Far from the hospital, the clinics, the spinal taps and chemotherapy treatments, the Children’s Cancer Network family spent a couple of hours at GCU Arena for something a little more fun. Alongside the live-wire Havocs, the families were special guests at the men’s basketball game Wednesday night as they threw out a Lopes Up or two before being introduced on the court. It was a welcome break for the families, who are readying themselves for the ninth annual Children’s Cancer Network Run to Fight Children’s Cancer, headed to campus March 16.