College of Science, Engineering and Technology

For many students, high school robotics events get them interested in the STEM disciplines they will eventually study in college. If this week is any indication, as Grand Canyon University Arena hosts the West Regional of the Arizona FIRST Robotics Competition, the showdowns are wildly popular and filled with the showmanship of major sporting events. The event is free and open to the public beginning at 8:30 a.m. both days.

Story by Janie Magruder Photos by Darryl Webb GCU News Bureau In the best sense of the word, Brad Scruggs, Ahmad Saleem and Brian Scruggs are taskmasters. The recent biology graduates of Grand Canyon University put medical school on hold six months ago to jump aboard an international phenomena fueled by the popularity of Uber, the mobile-app-based transportation service. They created a software application that matches people who need tasks done sooner rather than later with people who have the know-how, desire and time — now — to do them and launched Joblyt. The young entrepreneurs needed funding, and they got it Tuesday when the judges selected Joblyt the grand prize winner of the 2015 GCU Canyon Challenge, which was hosted by the Colangelo College of Business before an estimated crowd of 400 in GCU Arena. The Scruggs brothers and Saleem, instructional assistants in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, received a $7,000 check for first place plus $4,000 more for nabbing 49 percent of the votes in a 20-hour texting campaign drawing nearly 5,200 voters. That’s 11 grand that goes, you guessed it, back into the business. “You can’t patent an idea,” Brian Scruggs said of a concept that […]

It’s not every day that you get to experience how blunt force trauma causes blood spatter patterns that can actually be studied and cataloged to help solve a murder. This morning, more than 1,800 visiting high school students had a shot to learn blood-spatter analysis and other forensic reconstruction techniques as part of Grand Canyon University’s annual Forensic Science Day.

As part of its Homecoming/Canyon Day festivities, GCU will induct eight new members into its Alumni Hall of Fame during a ceremony Saturday on campus. The alumni, who were selected from each of the University’s colleges and athletics department, have dedicated their lives to helping others through education, nursing, counseling, science, coaching and the law, while reflecting GCU’s spirit and Christian ideals. Saturday’s ceremony, at 3:30 p.m. in the Student Union, second floor, is open to the GCU community and their guests and also will be live streamed here. GCU Today has a story about the inductees and what makes them tick.

Saturday’s celebration of the eight newest members of the GCU Alumni Hall of Fame featured passionate speeches, none more emotional than that of Michael Kary, who teaches in the College of Fine Arts and Production. But all eight had something important to say.

Fall semester at GCU was a time of great growth — in students, courses, programs and learning — and as GCU hosts its first winter commencement this afternoon for about 700 traditional graduates, GCU Today takes the opportunity to celebrate the University’s stellar faculty. They have gone beyond the call of duty to assist students inside their classrooms and outside of them, too, dedicating many extra hours, evenings and weekends to student success. Click here to read stories about several of them.

So many things happened at Grand Canyon University in 2014, it’s hard to pick the 10 most important.

The growth of GCU’s technology degree programs will continue in fall 2015 when the University’s first-ever engineering students arrive on campus to begin working toward degrees with biomedical, electrical and mechanical concentrations. Associate dean Dr. Michael Sheller of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology said the program design began nearly two years ago through the hard work and collaborations led by Dr. Michael Mobley and Haley Peebles, who oversee the University’s Center for Integrated Science, Engineering and Technology. GCU Today has a story about the new engineering programs and how they fit into the overall academic goal to better train young people for STEM-oriented careers.

By GCU News Bureau On a day when 530 Grand Canyon University traditional graduates were on cloud nine as they paraded up to receive their diplomas, numbers were the name of the game — and there were two ways about it. First, this was a first. GCU had never before held a winter commencement until Friday afternoon at the Arena, but the University’s ever expanding student population made it obvious a year and a half ago that it would become necessary. First-semester graduates previously had to wait until spring commencement if they wanted to participate in the ceremony. Second, there was the numerical magic of Justin Willman, who wowed the crowd in his entertaining commencement address, just as he had in the October ceremony for online graduates. His closing trick, in which the random numbers he got from four students equaled, when multiplied, the date and exact time (121,214,437, or 12/12/14 at 4:37 p.m.), is impossible to figure. But in between jokes and other tricks, Willman, host of “Cupcake Wars,” had a simple message for the graduates: “No matter how you do the math, the past and the future always wind up adding up to the present.” Three cheers for that. —Rick […]

Students in Grand Canyon University’s new “innovative Computing” club (known by its iC abbreviation) are already working with advisers to help launch academic cloud-computing technology for the first-ever GCU computer science/information technology course. The club of mostly freshmen are also looking forward to collaborating on extracurricular tech projects.