Colleges

The Pineda brothers, Josh and Jake, have used their GCU degrees in Digital Design with an Emphasis in Web Design to get off to a strong start in the field. But that’s not where their similarities end. Hardly. They hung out together when they both were on campus, and now they share their common interests when they travel.

They analyzed blood spatter and DNA. They did toxicology screenings. And they studied together and helped each other pass their Forensic Science classes. Now David Carillo, Emily Helmes and Hannah David, who received their bachelor’s degrees from GCU in April, are doing one more thing together: They’re all headed to the same graduate school. It shows not only the strength of GCU’s Forensic Science program but how close-knit its students are. “Students form strong friendships that elevate their performance in classes,” said Dr. Melissa Beddow, program director. “When one starts to fall, the others rally around to lift each other up.”

Nathan Cooper knew about growing corn and soybeans on vast Midwest farm fields that four generations of his family have tended. Farming in the desert is a whole different ballgame. But the manager of GCU’s new Canyon Urban Farms, designed to feed and educate the neighborhood, met the challenges and this week donated 40 pounds of squash to the refugee population.

The abrupt transition of ground classes to the online platform could have weakened the strong bond students have with the Honors College, but its administrators wouldn’t let that happen. They have established a number of ways to keep students engaged with their peers, and one of them, Tuesday Night Trivia, has continued into the summer.

Christian Worldview 101 often inspires students, and now they have another class that could expand their faith. Beginning with the fall semester, Christian Life: The Way of Jesus will help them apply their faith to their career. “I think it will be good for students in any program,” said Brett Berger, part of the three-man committee that crafted the CWV 316 curriculum.

When Spring Commencement was postponed because of COVID-19, the Graefe family still wanted to celebrate its two graduates: Jake, who had earned his bachelor’s degree, and his mother, Beth, who had just completed her dissertation defense. Beth asked her dissertation committee chair, Dr. JoAnn Foley Markette, if she would give a speech via Zoom for the impromptu ceremony, and Markette delivered a talk they won’t forget. “I got teary eyed because Dr. Markette said such beautiful things,” Beth said.

Months before COVID-19 hit, Dr. Crystal McCabe and Sonya Berges of the College of Education gave a presentation whose driving point was “we are all in this together.” It was later a rally cry for the pandemic but also for distance learning, and their presentation on the subject won an award at a prestigious conference.

Miranda Diaz was worried about her future. She was living at home with her Texas parents because of the pandemic and ready to graduate from GCU in two days. Then, the phone rang. She landed a job, thanks in part to the growing partnerships between GCU and behavioral health agency employers in Phoenix.

GCU’s Information x Technology Club, or IxT as it’s more popularly known, wants to illuminate basketball games and other big campus events, so came up with its Havocs blinky badge project. The club is in the process of producing these smart badges, which can receive a signal from a device that tells the badges to light up en masse.

How students would perform in their classes during a pandemic — that was a big unknown. But now that the semester has wrapped up, GCU’s leaders were thrilled to hear how their students did. Compared to the same time last year, their course completion rates improved, meaning more students passed their courses. Also, a larger percentage of faculty members received high marks from students this year compared to last year on end-of-course surveys. Those numbers were the final measure of all the University’s distance-learning efforts, said Provost Dr. Hank Radda. “It’s sort of the piece at the end of the story, about everything we did all those weeks ago when we began the transition to online.”