Outreach

Photos by Ralph Freso GCU News Bureau High school students who might be interested in ROTC took part Saturday in a special Discover GCU trip. ROTC Day gave them a look at what life in the military is like.      

GCU’s partnership with Habitat for Humanity passed two major milestones Saturday — 1,000 repairs and 400 homes. Lopes Go Local (formerly Serve the City) was yet another opportunity for a neighborhood homeowner to witness the extraordinary compassion of GCU students, but the joy goes both ways. ““We’re grateful that she allows us to help her. It means a lot. It really does,” said junior Talbert Herndon.

Photos by Ralph Freso GCU News Bureau Grand Canyon University students and President Brian Mueller teamed up to serve the community Saturday in the semiannual Lopes Go Local, in which they renovate neighborhood homes.  

Photos by Ralph Freso GCU News Bureau The announcement of the new Fostering Futures Scholarships drew a large crowd to the GCU Student Union on Thursday morning, including Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.  

You could tell Thursday meant a lot to GCU. The Student Union was packed. The governor was here. The announcement of new Fostering Futures Scholarships to help foster children in Arizona get a GCU education unleashed emotions from speaker and GCU alumna Jacqueline Carter and from many in the crowd. “I’ve been in press conferences a lot, but hardly ever have I have seen people crying. This is a heartfelt, unifying effort,” said GCU Vice President of Operations Sarah Boeder.

They got tired of asking their grandchildren to get them unstuck from technology devices. So they came to GCU’s campus lugging mobile phones and laptops to the Tech Savvy Seniors class, taught by GCU Honors College students who could walk them through it. One of five GCU Golden Lopes courses that began their four-week spring run last week for folks age 55 and over, this class deftly crossed five generations as young and old worked together to get that confounded phone to work right.

Photos by Ralph Freso GCU News Bureau The Golden Lopes program for the fall semester includes Tech Savvy Seniors, a four-week opportunity for people age 55 and over to get answers to their questions about cellphones, laptops and the like. It is taught by Honors College students.      

What did GCU’s Music Department do when the pandemic prevented live choir concerts? Record an album, of course. The Canyon Chorale and Critical Mass will perform songs from that album at 7 p.m. Friday at La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church in Scottsdale and at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Valley Presbyterian in Scottsdale. Admission is free. The new album will debut later this spring.

Photos by Ralph Freso GCU News Bureau Students from five high schools on Friday were given a tour of Canyon Ventures and then intensive training on how to deliver a “TED talk.” Their instructors were Grand Canyon University students who organize, plan and produce the annual TEDxGCU event. Here’s the story.  

The student committee preparing for the sixth annual TEDxGrandCanyonUniversity event, scheduled for April 8 in GCU Arena, spent five hours Friday teaching high school students about entrepreneurship and “TED talks.” It even was helpful to the high school instructors — one of them said she had never seen college students so engaged with her students. Some of the high schoolers were notably uneasy with public speaking, but it wasn’t that long ago that the TEDxGCU leaders felt the same way. And look at them now.