Colleges

Dr. Araxi Hovhannessian, Senior Adjunct Professor and Dissertation Chair in the College of Doctoral Studies, was delighted to see three of her learners earn their doctorates in the last year, and she also gets a kick out of watching them become even better teachers than she considers herself. When not coaching dissertations, she likes to travel to faraway lands.

Lena-May Haught and Wendy Bowersox want to help change a troubled world. That’s the fiery passion of students in Social Work programs at GCU. Haught, a sophomore, hopes to one day bring children in foster care to the farm, and Bowersox hopes to improve government policies to help the underserved. Haught will enter the new bachelor’s degree program in Social Work in the fall while Bowersox has been studying in the year-old Master of Social Work program, both examples of GCU meeting the demands for more social workers when they are needed more than ever.

There were innovations aplenty as GCU dealt with the pandemic. But none of the required alterations were more visible than the cutouts in GCU Arena, where the basketball environment still was plenty loud enough to be noticed by visiting coaches. Reprinted from the February issue of GCU Magazine.

The Spring Songwriters Showcase went off without a hitch Monday night. No surprise there — the Recording Studio is more than capable of presenting the livestream. But the list of performers did have some surprises, such as Yoo Jin “Gabby” Kim, who had to fully learn English when she came to GCU from South Korea three years ago, and freshman Briseyda Payan, who converted to Christianity only a year and a half ago.

The timing was right for GCU student Ashley Courlivant. A side business that she had nurtured for four years took off during the pandemic, and Canyon Challenge judges saw the promise in her Heavenly & Gel company that sells customized press-on fingernails. The senior was awarded first place and $2,500 in the student entrepreneurial competition Friday night.

From natural deodorant to COVID-19 research, there was no shortage of impressive student presentations at this year’s CSET Research Symposium and Honors Showcase on Saturday. Honors finalists delivered in-person presentations while CSET finalists presented orally via Zoom. “It just goes to show how active and engaged our students were both inside and outside the classroom this year despite COVID-19 and limitations on what they could and couldn’t do,” Honors College Associate Dean Dr. Breanna Naegeli said.

Math is not something to fear and is important to understand. That’s the message Molly Fleming demonstrates to students in her role as a math lecturer in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences — for example, a portion of her College Mathematics class is devoted, very practically, to financial math. She feels fortunate to have the opportunity to share that belief after starting out in the social sciences.

Photos by Garrett Ohrenberg GCU News Bureau The “Beyond Limits” Spring Faculty Dance Concert will have performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday, March 26-28, at the stage outside the Fine Arts Building. Friday night’s performance will be livestreamed and will begin at 7 p.m., in order to showcase five dance films. The livestream can be viewed on GCU’s YouTube channel.    

It’s been a year full of pushing limits, and that’s what will be portrayed Friday through Sunday, March 26-28, at the “Beyond Limits” Spring Faculty Dance Concert. The performance will showcase seven live pieces and five films and can be viewed via livestream. “With all of the challenges that this pandemic has thrown at our students and everyone in this world, this show is really about finding ways to transcend the limits and finding ways to move forward and grow despite all of these limitations that we’ve had,” Dance Director Bekki Price said.

The GCU Theatre Department had another big year at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Brandon Brown and Abby Yee made it to the finals of the Irene Ryan Acting Competition, and Morgan McCall was offered a $1,500 scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts program. “I really focus on the feedback that they get at this level of performance more than if they get trophies,” Acting instructor Michael Kary said. “We have been doing better and better. I think that our school has grown in reputation because of its presence at the festival over the last few years.”