College of Science, Engineering and Technology

The new GCU Innovation Center now has a director (Robert Vera), a home (Building 66 at 27th Avenue), a slogan (“Create your purpose”) and a GCU-oriented goal — to provide opportunities for both GCU students and local start-ups. Dr. Randy Gibb, Dean of the Colangelo College of Business, calls it “a different way to approach this start-up world.” Vera certainly knows how to approach that world as well as a lot of other ventures. He’s even a best-selling author.

It’s not every day that a university accepts the incoming application of a 15-year-old applicant, but Shreya Muthu isn’t your everyday student. Muthu skipped both eighth grade and her sophomore year of high school and will attend GCU for the fall semester. “I’m super excited, I love the atmosphere here and I’m excited to see the opportunities that it brings me,” she said.

Ryan Hatmaker had good reason to want to make the Disneyland All-American College Band: His parents met there long ago while doing their own performances. But there was one problem. The Grand Canyon University snare drummer, who plays for the Thundering Heard Pep Band, was asked to play a different drum at the audition. He had never play the tenor drums — five instead of one. He didn’t panic. He called on his GCU attitude: Smile and have fun.

“We’re the better neurons!” one student declared at GCU’s Biovision Day Camp after playing a few rounds of the Neuron Game. Sixth through ninth graders not only made like neurons but were wowed by the colors of light streaming through spectroscopes, gandered at 3D printers and more at the camp. It was just one of a quartet of STEM-savvy Thunder Vision offerings, with a different science and tech focus each day (Robovision, Ecovision and Cybervision among them) offered by the University’s K12 Educational Development. More than 500 students are attending the one-day camps, which wrap up today.

For the first time, GCU has rolled out its first Formula SAE race car. The GCU Formula SAE Team, which has been fabricating the small-scale version of a Formula vehicle since January, worked all weekend to get the car ready for the Lincoln Formula SAE competition, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday in Nebraska. A team of about 20 will be recognized with a send-off event at 1 p.m. today outside the Engineering Building. Once they reach the competition, they will be competing against 79 other university teams — around 1,300 undergraduate and graduate students — from not only the United States but countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Canada.

GCU’s professors stepped away from the whiteboards and threw themselves into the world of Harry Potter, “Game of Thrones,” “Pokemon,” “Star Wars and the like as they infiltrated Phoenix Fan Fusion as guest panelists over Memorial Day weekend. They delved into everything from the science of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” to the biology in the film “Bird Box” to the ethics behind integrating technology and the brain in the film “Ghost in the Shell.” “The audience engagement – that’s the best part about it – and really communicating science with the public in a more fun and entertaining and engaging way,” said biology professor Dr. Darien Hall.

It seemed like a half-baked idea: Build a bridge using … potatoes. But Sevilla West MESA Team students did just that at the first Engineering Shops Tour and Workshop in GCU’s Engineering Building. It was the first tour of its kind and the neat thing about it — it was student-conceived (by recent electrical engineering graduate Michael Erisman) and student-led.

By the time computer programming majors graduate from GCU, they’ll do so with a multitude of apps in their arsenal. They start building their first web applications the first semester they’re here and don’t stop until their yearlong senior capstone project. Not only that, but they learn not just the standard two computer languages, instead delving into three primary computer programming languages. Few colleges, if any, break computer programming into its own discipline, separate from computer science; GCU does. Said Computer Programming Faculty Lead Mark Reha, “Here we have a nugget right in the palm of our hand because there’s no programs that I’m aware of — bachelor programs — in the entire United States that has this focus.”

Photos by David Kadlubowski GCU News Bureau The Friday afternoon ceremony of spring commencement at Grand Canyon University featured 912 online graduates from the Colangelo College of Business, the College of Fine Arts and Production, the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, and the College of Theology. To watch a replay of the ceremony, click here.     

Photos by David Kadlubowski GCU News Bureau A total of 865 students from the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, the College of Science, Engineering and Technology and the College of Theology received their degrees Thursday evening at Grand Canyon University’s spring commencement. To watch a full replay, click here.