College of Humanities and Social Sciences

There was no shortage of inspirational redemption stories at Wednesday’s Phoenix Rescue Mission Signing Event as three of four scholarship recipients signed their letter of intent to attend the University in the fall. The recipients, who have completed the nonprofit’s Recovery Program, include Amanda Jaramillo, Jacqueline Mix, Brian Farretta and GCU 2019 alum Jesse Dalla Riva. “These people have had some significant challenges and they’ve taken the first step now, they’ve gone through the Phoenix Rescue Mission Program, they’ve come out of it successfully and they’ve started their new life,” said GCU President Brian Mueller. “For us to be able to offer them this opportunity to take their life now to a whole new level is a blessing.”

How people communicate has changed drastically over the past several years, and anyone with a mobile phone knows just how crazy that can get. GCU will equip students for those continued changes with six new programs of study. New bachelor’s programs in Social Media and Professional Writing and three new Communications emphases will launch in the fall and highlight the ethics, civility and judgment in media and communications that are sorely needed these days.

When Will Gonzalez hears others say about another person, “Oh well, that’s their lot in life. That’s what they are,” he disagrees wholeheartedly. “I think you can intercept people at different points in their lives,” he said. “I think there is the potential for redeeming.” It’s what makes the city of Phoenix prosecutor so passionate about his work in the community, particularly in schools. His work has included everything from presenting teen dating violence programs to advocating for restorative justice in public schools and bringing a $3.6 million Boys & Girls Club to one campus. It’s also why Gonzalez, a GCU alumni and Chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees, was recently named the Phoenix Union High School District Alumni of the Year.

Senior Jess Kennedy and her teammates on GCU Speech and Debate showed off the skills that earned them top finishes nationally this year in a showcase on Wednesday night on the Grove Lawn. One of those skills is quickly coming up with a speech based off an audience member quote, and Kennedy nailed it. “To be up there and see the wheels turning in people’s heads as they consider things that maybe they hadn’t before, you really do feel like you are making a difference,” she said.

Lena-May Haught and Wendy Bowersox want to help change a troubled world. That’s the fiery passion of students in Social Work programs at GCU. Haught, a sophomore, hopes to one day bring children in foster care to the farm, and Bowersox hopes to improve government policies to help the underserved. Haught will enter the new bachelor’s degree program in Social Work in the fall while Bowersox has been studying in the year-old Master of Social Work program, both examples of GCU meeting the demands for more social workers when they are needed more than ever.

There were innovations aplenty as GCU dealt with the pandemic. But none of the required alterations were more visible than the cutouts in GCU Arena, where the basketball environment still was plenty loud enough to be noticed by visiting coaches. Reprinted from the February issue of GCU Magazine.

Math is not something to fear and is important to understand. That’s the message Molly Fleming demonstrates to students in her role as a math lecturer in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences — for example, a portion of her College Mathematics class is devoted, very practically, to financial math. She feels fortunate to have the opportunity to share that belief after starting out in the social sciences.

GCU online student Lanna Thompson faced a dilemma. Both she and husband Kyle are GCU online students. But they live in Iowa, home to the Iowa Hawkeyes, GCU’s opponent in the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Saturday. Not only that, her late father-in-law was a Hawkeye booster known across the state. Which team to cheer for? It seemed obvious for a family that “bleeds black and gold.” Not so fast — they’re Lopes fans now.

Dr. Afiya Burson, an Online Full-Time Faculty member in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, is passionate about advocacy, self-care and self-awareness. She shares an interesting story about an encounter with a student helped her grow as a person and as a teacher, and she also opens up about what she collected as a child — she still has 200 of them today.

Amanda Sullivan, a graduate-level School Counseling student, faced a year of COVID challenges and a Texas weather disaster in February during her practicum with characteristic GCU aplomb and humanity. She helped call every student’s family to make sure they were OK, and she took over counseling duties after the office’s leader faced the virus at home. That school counselor said Sullivan “saved the day.”