College of Humanities and Social Sciences

GCU alumni Felipe Reyes, Dylan Santos and Kevin Llamas created FADES, an app designed to make getting a haircut easier. Their ultimate goal is to link customers with mobile barbers. “It’s going to take some time (to educate people to use the app and to go mobile), but people weren’t doing taxes on their phone not too long ago, either,” Reyes said.

Students did a number on GCU’s math professors Thursday on the Promenade as they hurled pies in their face to recognize National Pi Day. The event, which also included a bake sale, complete with pies of a different kind, was organized by GCU’s new Math Ed Club to celebrate math. Associate Professor Ben VanDerLinden acknowledged how the United States performs poorly when it comes to math but is looking to the next generation of math teachers, like the ones in the club, to change that course. “These guys care,” he said.

One concentration camp survivor told Avshi Weinstein that music, for him, became a torturer. After the war, he could no longer listen to or enjoy music. Many other survivors, who were musicians at the camps, would never touch their instruments again. But Weinstein, a third generation violin maker and restorer, and his father, Amnon, have been reclaiming that musical heritage with the Violins of Hope project. The Weinsteins have collected and restored more than 70 Holocaust violins and have given the stories of the musicians who played them a voice. Avshi Weinstein was at GCU this weekend with several of the violins, before GCU Theatre’s presentation of Holocaust drama “Who Will Carry the Word?” He spoke about the project — it includes two months of events — and shared some of those Holocaust stories.

John Iannarelli worked some high-profile cases when he was with the FBI — the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the Oklahoma City bombing. He spent some time Wednesday speaking with students about his work with the FBI and qualities that make a good leader. Iannarelli was on campus as part of the Provost Speaker Series.

GCU Theatre Department’s moving play, “Who Will Carry the Word?,” brings the somber truths of what happened in Auschwitz to a group of French Resistance fighters to the Ethington Theatre stage. Claude Pensis and a powerful female cast showcase Charlotte Delbo’s haunting story.

When students identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) struggle to fit in socially, GCU leaders collaborate with solutions. In Part 2 of GCU Today’s series, Dr. Tim Griffin, Pastor and Dean of Students, Dr. Sherman Elliott, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the father of a son on the spectrum and Student Disability Services director Beth Jamison discuss their experiences supporting students on the spectrum.

The February issue of GCU Magazine has been distributed to the purple bins across the main campus and at 27th Avenue, and it features an in-depth look at the GCU enterprises that have become game-changers for both students and local residents.

In the Theatre Department’s “Who Will Carry the Word?”, the characters are determined that at least one of them must survive to tell their story. It’s a theme shared by the Violins of Hope, a collection of violins restored by Israeli master violin maker and restorer Amnon Weinstein. The instruments were played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust. Like the play, the violins also tell the stories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Weinstein, his son Avshalom, and a few of the instruments will be on campus Feb. 15-16 in conjunction with the presentation of the play, just one of the stage productions, art exhibits, concerts and more in the two-month-long Violins of Hope program being brought to Phoenix in February and March by the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.

Complex foreign policy issues proved challenging but not daunting for GCU’s extemporaneous speech team members at the Jannese Davidson Memorial Tournament at Concordia University in Irvine, Calif. On the strength of a first place, a runner-up and a fourth-place finish by extemporaneous speakers, GCU placed second overall behind Point Loma Nazarene, in a 24-team event. GCU students spoke about issues impacting China, Venezuela and the European Union.

The marathon reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy brought the words of the 14th century Italian poet to life on the GCU campus on Friday. Students and faculty members, along with a few high school teachers, were among the 50 readers who combined to read all 100 cantos of “Inferno”, “Purgatorio’’ and “Paradiso”, a view of the afterlife. The project is the passion of Assistant Professor Jonathan Olson, who packed two lunches and reveled in every moment of the marathon.