College of Education

GCU online alum Zenon Castro plans to swap his cleaning supplies for textbooks and become a special education teacher, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Castro began working as a night custodian at Mountain Vista Elementary in Indio, Calif., while earning student teaching hours toward his master’s degree, which he completed in June. He plans to take over a special education classroom at Mountain Vista this fall.

GCU is planning the biggest welcome for the biggest entering class in its history next week, as thousands of freshmen move onto campus into seven residence halls, four of them brand new. Meet 10 members of the Class of 2019 who bring a grand diversity of skills, interests, plans, passions, backgrounds and geography to GCU and will surely make their mark on the world.

By Rick Vacek GCU Today Magazine In just one year, Heather Jancoski has shown her students at South Mountain High in Phoenix that persistence can be glamorous in broadcast journalism. The 2009 GCU graduate (M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction: Technology) had barely walked through the classroom door when she had a dozen disciples (“Our own little mini-family”) producing Jaguar News, a weekly television program about happenings on campus. Not long after, Jancoski’s determination to make contact with the Public Broadcasting Service paid off in a collaboration on school safety with PBS NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs. “The things you taught us — that’s what we’re doing!” her students told her. “To see it on the national news was great for them, too,” she said. The learning process continued with Jancoski’s insistence that her class develop social media skills to apply the proper analytics to those communications. And that optimized a mash-up of story ideas. For her efforts, Jancoski, 33, was honored in the Creative Media category in Cox Communications’ 2015 Connect2STEM Awards, and even that had a side benefit: An assisted-living home wants her students to do a video about the facility and mentor residents on producing their own stories. But […]

Grand Canyon University hosted the third and final Lopes Leap to Teach job fair on Thursday. The event drew dozens of dozens of job-hunting students and school officials dealing with Arizona’s statewide teacher shortage.

Three days of commencement ceremonies at GCU ended Saturday afternoon, and there were enough cheers to fill a stadium and enough tears to use up a box of Kleenex. Amid all the emotions were more stories of grit and determination — and not just among the graduates.

By GCU News Bureau Thursday morning’s commencement, the first of six to be held this week for the Grand Canyon University’s Class of 2015 in the Arena, had all the usual pomp — grinning parents using cellphones and Canons, elaborately decorated mortarboards balanced on graduates’ heads and purple in every corner of the Arena, on flowers, stoles and drapes. (Click here to see a slideshow.) But the 80-minute ceremony attended by 528 undergraduates in five colleges — Theology, Fine Arts and Production, Education, Humanities and Social Sciences and Science, Engineering and Technology — also was punctuated by poignant circumstances. For one, several graduates in the first CSET class adorned their mortarboards in ways unique to their career paths, such as outlines of bodies and crime scene tape. And there was not one but two student speakers, identical twin sisters Joy and Claire Flatz, who earned degrees in theatre from the College of Fine Arts and Production. The duo, who are as close to America’s sweethearts as you can get, did a lovely tag-team bit about how the University’s campus has changed in four years. (Then: no lines, no Chick-fil-A and the worst parking spot was behind Hegel Hall next to […]

By Janie Magruder GCU Today Magazine As a student at Canby High in northwestern Oregon, Bryce Beatty filled his days with chemistry, honors biology, advanced placement physics and playing shortstop for the baseball team. But when he came to Grand Canyon University in 2012, Beatty traded his mitt and jersey for latex gloves and an apron. For the then freshman, focusing on his major — biology with an emphasis in pre-med — required protection for his hands and clothing in GCU’s cadaver lab. Despite his considerable high school science background, Beatty knew he would need some help in chemistry as he pursued a career in spine surgery. As soon as he arrived on campus, he requested tutoring help from the Center for Learning & Advancement (CLA). Now a junior in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, Beatty is one of GCU’s top science tutors. He helped inspire University leaders to restructure the tutoring system and is assisting with its success. There’s extra credit, of course: “If you can teach it, you know it,” he said. Narrowing the focus Tutoring has evolved over the past 18 months during a perfect storm of change at GCU. The administration wanted to boost […]

The first Senior Night at GCU was a big moment Thursday for nine students and eight faculty/staff members, who were among a crowd of 450 in the Arena. The student award recipients were selected by University leadership in the areas of academics, athletics and student affairs and for their service, faith and spirit. The faculty and staff received awards for positively impacting students.

More than 220 students contributed to the Grand Canyon University Best Buddies club’s paper chain that’s now hanging in the ground floor hallway at the College of Education as part of a national campaign “Spread the Word to End the Word.”

Story by Michael Ferraresi Photos by Darryl Webb GCU Today Magazine As his second graders sat cross-legged in front of a colorful interactive assignment board, Anthony Pérez cautiously monitored the lesson. His eyes darted from student to student to examine their varying responses. This time, though, he wasn’t the teacher. A girl in a pink hoodie held that title for the moment, at the request of “Mr. Pérez.” It was her turn to lead her Sunset Elementary peers — kids in braids, camouflage fleece jackets and well-worn sneakers — through multiple exercises in the cinder block room. She directed the class with a cartoonish rubber finger. Pérez learned early that this method allows students to feel what it’s like to guide their own classmates to the correct answers and digest the material with ease. The 32-year-old Grand Canyon University alumnus and west Phoenix native grew up on the same side of town as his students — many who come from immigrant families and low-income homes and are part of a district with a higher than average number of children who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunch. In Arizona, a statewide teacher shortage, struggles with funding for public schools, and a […]