College of Science, Engineering and Technology

From costumes to music to choreography, there’s something for everyone in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” which opens Friday night in Ethington Theatre. The dreamcoat is a production of the collaboration between the College of Arts and Media and College of Science, Engineering and Technology. “He’s got a personality, that coat,” costume designer Nola Yergen said with a grin. “It’s truly a one-of-a-kind work of art.” The performance also marks an important first for the University – fiberoptic cabling that enables an orchestra to perform the show’s music live from the GCU Recording Studio.

Melanie Spence knows a little something about the job application and interview process. The GCU software development major applied to about 100 different positions before landing her part-time student software developer gig at LittleBird. She was one of three panelists — the other panelists were General Motors software developer Andres Paez and Deloitte cloud engineer Christina Herman — who shared their experiences with students at the Technology Deans Speaker Series on Friday. They not only discussed the interview process but how they continue to learn on the job, how important it is to work with a team and what they wished they learned in college.

Men outnumber women in cybersecurity three to one. It’s one of the reasons the Technology Club’s Girls Who Code Committee put together its Coding with My Girls event. Middle and high school students at Saturday’s hackathon heard from a panel of STEM students, then used code to build websites for fictional companies, with plenty of GCU student mentors standing by to help. “Definitely, this event is to advocate for women coming into STEM, and then trying to eliminate that stigma girls may have that they’re not good enough to get into a technical position. That’s what this is all about,” said Niya Patterson, committee lead.

The adventures of “The Odyssey” came alive Friday on the lawn near GCU Arena as students and faculty took turns reading Emily Wilson’s translation of the epic book. The event, which had to be postponed the last two years because of the pandemic, drew more than just English majors. “I’m a science student and I don’t get much arts exposure, so I’d like to be more around it,” sophomore Karsten Brandsma said.

“You’ve got to get that handshake down, ladies,” Susan Detwiler told GCU’s students at Tuesday’s Women in STEM panel. “It’s got to be confident. It’s got to be firm. It is the first impression. … Be the first to put a hand out.” The art of handshaking? “It’s HUGE.” Detwiler, a civil engineer at private consulting firm Dibble, was just one of four engineering, technology and career professionals who shared their experiences in the STEM field. The event covered everything from salary negotiations to over-apologizing to being confident to go for a job even though you don’t meet all the qualifications.

Thousands of alumni, students, families and friends came to campus to participate in the University’s first in-person Homecoming Family Weekend since before the pandemic. There was no shortage of excitement as fan favorites returned and new events popped up. “This is the Disneyland of campuses. We really just enjoy coming out here,” said Warren Thompson, who came to campus with his family to visit daughter Bella. “It’s been great to connect and see some other students that our daughter has connected with and meet their parents. Everyone seems really down to earth.”

An action-packed weekend is upon us as this year’s Homecoming Family Weekend draws closer. For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, events from Homecoming and Family Weekend will be restored to their in-person format. There is no shortage of ways to get involved on and off campus.

GCU News Bureau GCU alumni Thomas Varkey, John Varkey and Zachary Merhavy are co-authors of a paper, “Learning or Memorization: Self-Directed Medical School Curriculum and the Dangers of Overemphasizing Student-Selected Ancillary Resources,” in the March 1 issue of the Galician Medical Journal. It is a response to an opinion article that addresses the decrease in students attending lectures and engaging in standard curriculum at medical institutions. The opinion article suggests incorporating student-developed didactic resources instead of continuing to use standard curriculum. The response paper suggests, instead, that lectures should be modified to encourage attendance by increasing useful “clinical pearls” and hints on how to best understand the material and provide practice problems or other self-directed testing methodology to increase student learning and retention. Thomas Varkey, a 2017 GCU biology/pre-med graduate, is a GCU adjunct professor and a medical student at the University of Texas Dell Medical School in Austin. John Varkey graduated from GCU in 2020 with a degree in electrical/electronics engineering and is a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame. Merhavy, a 2018 GCU biology/pre-med graduate, is a medical student at the Ross University School of Medicine, based in Barbados.

What better way to cap off National Engineers Week on Saturday than with a multiple-challenge STEM event? High school and middle school students delved into everything from testing their cornhole catapult designs for a unique version of the popular lawn game, to solving computer science puzzles in the Hack Attack Challenge, to designing disaster relief shelters. It was all part of MESA Regional Design Day at GCU to help students prepare for the state Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement competition in April, and a slew of students representing various GCU STEM clubs were on site to help in the event, hosted by K12 Educational Development.

When Dylan Huttenlocher was a freshman, he remembered attending Kahoot review sessions that helped him so much as he prepared for exams. It’s why the science learning advocate, or LEAD, at the Willow Academic and Career Excellence Center wanted to present his own Kahoot, which is a game-based learning platform, much like a trivia game. And it’s good he did. It was standing-room-only at his first Kahoot, and he’s hoping to help even more students at the next session on Monday.