Grand Canyon University

Excited students brought life back to the GCU campus on a Saturday night of celebration. Welcome Fest was filled with activities all across campus. What the new students learned was the overwhelming sense of community that can still exist six feet apart and wearing masks. “You are not alone,” host Caleb Duarte told a group of freshman gathering on the fields in The Grove. “We are one Lope. We are one herd.”

“There are a lot of things that I am unsure of. But tonight, what I do know, is that we are at a place that has allowed an opportunity for diversity and awareness and inclusion to be possible,” said Donald Glenn, Director of the Multicultural, Diversity and Inclusion Office at Sunday’s One Love Awareness Walk. About 500 students and others in the campus community joined in the event, symbolic of GCU’s commitment to love, compassion, respect and dignity this semester. The walk, which introduced the campus to the newly expanded office, culminated Welcome Week events and helped usher in the new semester as students begin in-person learning today.

Nathan Hollis II, Assistant Professor in the College of Education, is a faculty member worth watching. After all, how often do you hear someone say, “I don’t believe my most notable professional accomplishment has come just yet. I believe it is on my journey ahead, and God continues to prepare me.”

The new outdoor stage for Ethington Theatre productions has been constructed in time for the first play of the season, “The Comedy of Errors,” which begins Wednesday night. It turned into an educational project for College of Fine Arts and Production staff and students. “I think we’re uniquely suited for this,” COFAP Assistant Dean William Symington said. “It’s been a challenge, but we create a problem-solving way of thinking of how to do something in a different way and how to make a positive out of it.”

The highlight of GCU senior Connor Keene’s summer? That’s an easy one: He went to Vermont for a six-day seminar focusing on the free-market beliefs of the late Milton Friedman. The trip was arranged by two of his Colangelo College of Business mentors, Robert Vera and Tim Kelley, and Keene made the most of it.

Christian Simmons starts in-person classes Monday with a lot of intense stories he can tell about his summer. He fought wildfires during one of the most intense fire seasons ever. The Government major and Students Inspiring Students scholarship recipient shares how one day in the Tonto National Forest the flames were too close for comfort.

GCU’s new Multicultural, Diversity and Inclusion Office wanted to help set the tone of dignity and respect for the academic year with the One Love Awareness Walk. The event, which will wind through campus beginning at 6:15 p.m. Sunday, is designed as “a peaceful opportunity to unite the student community from all backgrounds,” said Roman Kim, a student coordinator in the Multicultural Office. It’s also a chance to introduce the department to students as Welcome Week festivities wrap up.

Dr. Katherine Fetter, Doctor of Nursing Practice Program Lead for the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions, communicated with her learners so well, a colleague wanted to see it for herself. But that isn’t the only way that Fetter has bucked the trend — check out what happened when she rode a bull.

The pandemic forced Move-In to be a little different this year, but it couldn’t take away the volunteers’ welcoming spirit or the arriving students’ eagerness to rekindle fond campus memories or start creating new ones. “With as much as we changed Move-In, it still really does have a lot of the same energy and a lot of the same vibe,” said Charity Norman, Director of Welcome Programs.

We’ve heard a lot about fear over the years. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was famous for saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But in his online Chapel talk, Terry Mackey of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church reminded us that we have nothing to fear as long as we trust in God and know His Word.