College of Education

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.

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.

The second annual Bioethics Conference, titled “Human Dignity: Clash of World Views,” is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 20, at GCU Arena and the First Southern Baptist Church.

GCU is always evolving, with new buildings rising up and offices and colleges moving to new spaces. All the change makes for an interesting first-day of class. The GCU News team fanned out on Monday to talk to students, professors and even the Success Patrol and Academic Career Excellence Centers, who there there to make sure students found their classrooms.

You wouldn’t normally expect to find onesies, high-heeled shoes or Burt’s Bees at a college retail store, but you will find those things peppered among the notebooks, binders and a sea of purple T-shirts at the new Lope Shop. The store, which touts Champion and Nike concept areas, a tech area, boutique and more, opened Wednesday at its new 9,500-square-foot space on the Promenade. With its floor-to-ceiling glass display windows and modern, open feel, it’s a far cry different from its much smaller space — only one-fifth as big — on Lopes Way.

The best of the community is hiding in plain sight in GCU Arena, where by the end of the day the Back-to-School Clothing Drive will have provided shirts, pants, shoes, wallets, hair clips, school supplies and dental screenings to about 5,000 children, with 1,500 of those being foster kids. The event partnered with Arizona’s foster community this year to expand its reach, which means the world to foster parents. “They’ve been through a lot more than we’ll probably ever understand,” Josh Rice said

The terminology might sound the same, but when it comes to “nonprofit” and “not-for-profit,” there are subtle differences between the two. So when it comes to referring to Grand Canyon University, it’s important to use the correct terminology: We are a nonprofit.

Members of the GCU community — a student, a faculty member, an online staff member, a campus staff member and an academic leader — reflect on the meaning of Independence Day and describe how they will celebrate with family and friends.

The Commuter Lounge is one of the busiest places on the Grand Canyon University campus during summer school, but the students who use it love its more relaxed ambiance this time of year. As Ruben Garcia said, “I have more time to talk to some of the students I see in the lounge. Now that it is summer, we dive and delve.’’

Professors Crystal McCabe and Lynn Basko are accustomed to teaching future teachers in GCU’s College of Education, but teaching high school students who aspire to be teachers is a fairly infrequent experience, yet one they passionately embrace. Including McCabe and Basko, six GCU professors travel to Orlando this week for the 2018 Educators Rising National Conference, a gathering of over 1,000 high school students who are interested in teaching careers.