Outreach

The Summer Institute isn’t quite like the traditional s’mores and campfire summer camp. Instead, the more than a dozen academic camps in various GCU colleges saw high school sophomores, juniors and seniors learning about Trojan malware, investigating the qualities of polyvinyl alcohol cryogels, writing poetry or executing mock warrants — and making friends while staying in the University’s dorms for the two- to four-day camps. The institute geared up recently with various science camps and will continue throughout the summer with humanities, business, honors camps.

The Serve the Summer list of volunteer opportunities is available, and it includes ways to help children and those stuck in the heat. GCU Day is scheduled for July 23 and will be a great time to raise your hand. This year’s day of service is wrapped into the Back To School Clothing Drive.

Story by Theresa Smith Photos by David Kadlubowski  GCU News Bureau The ball is hoisted by the 6-year-old to the sure-handed 6-foot-7 athlete who playfully dekes the duo of pint-sized campers earnestly trying to guard him. It is a moment among millions at the individual youth session of the Dan Majerle boy’s basketball camp, and it symbolizes the cycle of the Grand Canyon University men’s basketball program. The hustling youngsters improve their skills, connect with the coaches — student-athletes and coaching staff of the 2018-19 men’s basketball team — develop an interest in and love for Lopes basketball, and become fans of the program, if not future members of the team. Exhibit A: the five friends, including two sets of brothers laughing and learning on Tuesday morning at the Lopes Performance Center. Lesson No. 1, according to Ashton Hollenberg, “Do not be a ball hog. Do not shoot if you’re not open.’’ His friend, Evan Engstrom, expressed a similar sentiment. “I’ve learned how to be a good teammate,’’ said Engstrom. “Coach is basically teaching everyone how to be a good teammate and how to share the ball.’’ Brothers T.J. Lyons and Connor Lyons are digging the shooting drills. “It feels […]

Dan Majerle remembers his first basketball camp: “I want to pass that same valuable experience along to more kids who love the game like me.” Youth will get that experience at the Dan Majerle Boys Basketball Camps, the first of which begins Monday.

GCU Strategic Educational Alliances’ Corinne Araza and Marni Landry are flexing their muscles as the University’s Dynamic STEM Duo. They put together a couple of webinars for the National Catholic Educational Association recently to help Catholic schools hone their STEM education techniques (that’s science, technology, engineering and math). But those webinars are just the warmup for a GCU-based series of webinars and podcasts SEA will launch in the fall, in partnership with Teaching Channel Plus, as SEA increases its web presence.

About 50 GCU employees loaded up four passenger vans and headed to the Arizona State Veteran Home on Wednesday for Salute Our Troops. It was where they played Texas Hold ‘Em with the veterans at the nursing care facility, joined in games of bean bag toss and sang in the military branch singalong. But more importantly, it was where they spent time visiting with some deserving military heroes.

“I wanted to pay it back,” GCU Enrollment supervisor Michael Rodriguez said at the GCU Volunteer Fair on Wednesday at the 27th Avenue office building as he signed up at the Big Brothers Big Sisters booth. Rodriguez himself was paired with a Big Brother when he was a kid. BBBS was just one of the 20 GCU-supported nonprofits employees were able to connect with at the fair, an event GCU Community Outreach Manager Debbie Accomazzo calls a “matchmaking opportunity.”

If you didn’t know what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was, you did after attending the Canyon Inquiry Project Showcase of Learning, which featured more than 80 students from 10 high schools presenting their projects — everything from the garbage patch to Sylvia Plath, the ways people have protested through the years, the dark side of social media and school mass shootings in America, to name a few. The event was the culmination of the eight-month project, in which teachers came to the GCU campus to immerse themselves in inquiry learning.

Children’s Cancer Network and Fresh Start, two non-profits, had similar problems: They needed some kind of messaging app to help them be more efficient. Enter GCU’s first cohort of Java coding boot camp students, who built apps to help solve those problems. The students, who are in the final week of the immersive, 15-week course, presented their capstone projects recently.

Like Hulk, GCU smashed at the recent DC vs. Marvel night at the Arizona Science Center. The College of Science, Engineering and Technology’s Dr. Binaben Vanmali, Scott McCrea and Deborah Haralson, the speakers at the event, discussed everything from electromagnetic pulses to The Flash’s diet to how villain The Vulture couldn’t possibly fly in that suit of his.