College of Science, Engineering and Technology

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.

It’s been a big year so far, but there’s more to come in 2018-19. The spring semester will kick off with the grand opening of the new 150,000-plus-square foot Colangelo College of Business Building on Jan. 9 and will barrel forward through April and May with signature events such as the Canyon Challenge, Mr. GCU, the Theatre Department’s presentation of Holocaust drama “Who Will Carry the Word,” Serve the City in February, the Roadshow Tour at GCU Arena, basketball and much more. Check out some highlights from GCU Today’s 2019 Winter-Spring Calendar.

According to Ebenezer Scrooge, “Every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” Harsh. Don’t count on anyone being boiled in his own pudding on the spirited GCU campus, where employees embraced the joy of the season in their Christmas decorations, from themes on the fourth floor of the 27th Avenue office building that ranged from a Phoenix Zoo ZooLights-inspired aisle of cubicles to a “12 Days of Christmas” aisle, to the College of Science, Engineering and Technology’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and Santa’s Science Lab hallways.

Emily Branch didn’t waste any time in her 3 1/2 years here at GCU. Not only did she maintain a full load of classes, but she worked the graveyard shift as an emergency medical technician, delved into undergraduate research on Sonoran desert plants to see if they might hold the secret to the next big antimicrobial/cancer-fighting drug, and even squeezed in an internship with Special Olympics. Not only that, but before walking the commencement stage on Friday to receive her bachelor’s degree in health care administration, she considered three job offers before accepting a position with Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

Photos by Slaven Gujic GCU News Bureau The Friday afternoon ceremony at Grand Canyon University winter commencement featured graduates of the College of Education, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, and College of Theology.    

It didn’t quite look like the typical finals week in instructor Li Tan’s Principles of Mechanical Design class. Students in his class took over the courtyard area outside of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology Building Tuesday to test the results of their class project — to design remote-control cars. Teams of four used SolidWorks to design their vehicles and then put them through the rigor of a speed race course and obstacle course. “They had to pass all the different terrains to satisfy the design concept. During this process, they’re able to learn the basic principles of design,” said Tan.

Bill Palowski served in the Air Force for 23 years. Christina Herman was a GCU student who changed her major three times and wasn’t sure what she wanted to do as a career. But after immersing themselves in four months in GCU’s Java Certificate Program, the new coders both were hired, before graduation, by a large technology consulting firm. They are examples of the success of the program, which made its debut this year. Palowski, Herman and five other Java boot camp students are finishing the camp Friday and held a showcase this week for industry leaders.

When GCU biology professor Dr. Galyna Kufryk saw that some of her microbiology students were struggling with the math in her course, she turned to GCU math professor Dr. Filippo Posta, who helped her put together a self-paced math lesson students could take that targeted the microbiology concepts she was trying to teach. After three years of collecting data, the results are impressive. Exam scores went up by 10.5 percent, on average, in the group of students using the math guide. Kufryk and Posta presented their findings at the recent Association of American Colleges & Universities conference in Atlanta.

“There’s real science going on … there’s real innovation,” Provost Dr. Hank Radda said during Wednesday’s Undergraduate Learning Community and Research Symposium. Student presenters spoke to the audience about everything from the Desert Owl Population Improvement Project to the Bible Virtual Reality Project and one team’s attempt to help nonprofits digitize their paper surveys.

“Why is There a Robot in My Operating Room?” We’re not sure why, either. But high school students found out why on Health Sciences, Engineering and Technology Day, where they learned about biomedical engineering (the reason there’s a robot in your operating room), discovered “The Unseen but SHOCKING World of Engineering,” stopped by a suture station, toured the cadaver and DNA labs and more. More than 950 high school students attended HSET Day Wednesday on the GCU campus.