Colleges

There are times when all someone needs is a little helping hand. That’s the case for Fernanda Munoz, a senor nursing student at GCU and a single mother of two. The nonprofit organization Helping Hands for Single Moms has taken Munoz under its wing, providing her with a scholarship to get her degree and additional services to make her dreams a reality. Munoz says her children are the driving force behind her education: “My daughter, she is so little, and she is so proud of me.”

Memorization drills, current events quizzes, mock debates and daily reading throughout the summer boosted Grand Canyon University’s Matthew Calderwood and Grace Laidlaw to a 10th-place finish in the Georgia B. Bowman Invitational last weekend at William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo. The pair argued successfully about drone use and germ modification.

The Honors College mentorship program kicked off last week with an event where freshmen went from “Uh, wow. College,” to, “I am not on my own.” The college’s FLIGHT program pairs freshmen with upperclassmen who have gone down a path similar to the one they have in mind. Teresita Figueroa, a senior pre-med major who for the past seven years has volunteered at a hospital, took freshman pre-med major Hadassah Gates under her wing.

A mixture of logical debate strategies for pro-life arguments and anecdotes about the sanctity of human life highlighted GCU’s second annual Bioethics Conference, Human Dignity: Clash of World Views. One speaker refused to abort her daughter and refused to use stem cells from fetuses to aid her brain damaged son. Another speaker shared heartfelt steps to ease grief from the loss of a newborn.

Thomas Brodek said working in television and film production is never dull and boring and recalled a time when he worked on the movie “The Savage Bees,” when he actually had to cast bees and find a beekeeper to helm that pivotal scene when “trained” bees were prompted to blanket a Volkswagen Beetle. Brodek, who has worked as a production executive for Showtime’s “The Tudors” and “The Borgias,” to name a few, spoke to GCU film and television students about his career and about getting a job in the industry.

The words of America’s forefathers could be heard over a loud speaker yesterday as three students celebrated Constitution Day by setting up shop on Lopes Way. They passed out patriotic freebies, including more than 150 pocket Constitutions. “It’s a privilege really to be able to speak the words our forefathers gave to us,” freshman Nolan Dominguez said. “And it’s still relevant in today’s world. … It’s just so important that we take time to reflect back on the past to change the future.”

If you stick to just Mozart, you’re missing out on a lot, said GCU clarinet professor Tim Haas. So for his bass clarinet recital Sept. 27 in the GCU Recording Studio, he’s turning to new compositions, the oldest of which dates back to 2006. The concert will spotlight works inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, a beast, the Lydian scale, and even the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

By Theresa Smith GCU News Bureau In August, Dr. Andrea Alden, an assistant professor of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, published her first book, “Disorder in the Court: Morality, Myth, and the Insanity Defense.” To order the book, click here. In a behind-the-scenes peek at the writing of the book, GCU Today peppered Alden with questions about her first single-author book project: How long did it take to research and write the book? It feels like a really long time, and it has been almost a decade from start to finish. I started the project in 2010 when I was a Ph.D. student; it eventually became my doctoral dissertation, which I completed and defended in October of 2013. I was introduced to the editor of the Rhetoric, Law, and Humanities book series with the University of Alabama Press, Dr. Clarke Rountree, by a colleague who thought he might be interested in the manuscript. He asked for a formal proposal, which I spent three months drafting (it was five pages long, but I wanted it to be perfect). My proposal did the trick, and I was offered an advance contract in early 2015. I delivered the first draft of […]

The new master’s degrees in teaching content programs at GCU meet educators’ needs, enabling high school teachers to keep their jobs teaching dual enrollment and adjunct college professors to maintain their positions at colleges and universities. The programs were designed to dovetail with the standards imposed by the Higher Learning Commission, which oversees colleges and universities in 19 states, including Arizona.

Grand Canyon University is known for its hospitality — and, more and more, its hospitality program, too. A kickoff event for the program, entering its fourth year, packed the Canyon 49 Grill, and a recent graduate shared tips about her success in the field and how the program helped her achieve it.