Online Life

This week’s Antelope Intros feature an online teacher who got turned on to GCU while working in Idaho and a new member of the athletics department whose favorite sport while growing up in Southern California might surprise you.

The new employees in this week’s Antelope Intros both are online faculty members who are at least relatively new to Phoenix. One of them has some impressive coaching accomplishments, and the other takes his love of environmental photography to electrifying heights.

GCU online student T.J. Fischer might be the perfect example of the type of student the University’s online program is designed for. Fischer grew up racing go-karts in Vacaville, Calif., and earned a spot in one of the United Kingdom’s tops open-wheel Mazda Car circuits last March after tearing up California tracks. The move to the UK forced him to choose between a traditional education at Pacific Lutheran University or racing. He found GCU through a friend and used the flexibility of online learning to climb the ladder and join the 2015 Renault series across Europe this year. Read more about Fischer’s racing career in this GCU Today story.

By GCU News Bureau In the cool, crisp minutes before Friday’s commencement at Grand Canyon University, Dr. Michael Berger joked that he’d seen a range of reactions to the suddenly stormy and briefly rainy skies. The locals were the ones bundled up under sweaters and jackets. Out-of-towners didn’t seem to feel the chill in the 60-something-degree air. Still, the rain was minimal, the puddles puny, and anyone unfamiliar with April in the Valley of the Sun had to marvel at how the crystal-clear weather blended with the ceremony message about new opportunities and wide-open futures for GCU’s 560 morning graduates. Their degrees were conferred in the Colangelo College of Business and the College of Doctoral Studies, and most completed their degrees entirely online. Berger, dean of GCU’s College of Doctoral Studies, is a concierge and guest-greeter each year at commencement, actively intercepting anyone he can to route them to tickets, entrances, restrooms or whatever they might need before he has to “step away and do the dean thing” with other University leaders at the ceremony. He is one of hundreds of GCU volunteers who make commencement a warm and inviting atmosphere for locals and visitors alike. Spotting the College of Doctoral Studies regalia in the crowd, Berger introduced himself to learners whom he might have known […]

By Rick Vacek GCU Today Magazine A day in the life of Tom Granado starts like a space launch — early and with a burst of energy that takes it to new heights. He and his wife, Wynn, get up at 4:30 a.m. and pray for a half-hour before she goes to work and he goes to work out. A few hours later, when the founder and CEO of New Horizon Youth Homes arrives in his Tempe, Ariz., office, his staff members say it’s impossible not to know he’s there, such is his considerable presence. They talk fondly about his “Tomisms,” about the way he gets excited about new ideas in staff meetings, and about how the family atmosphere he has created makes it like no other job they’ve had. It takes passion and unflagging enthusiasm to run 14 Valley locations that provide residential and outpatient services to at-risk children, teens and adults. It takes an incredible work ethic to do all that while completing his doctorate at Grand Canyon University. It takes someone like Tom Granado. “Our role model is our CEO,” said Jason Kindred, program director of New Horizon. “What I like,” added administrative director Mindy Leon, “is […]

By Paige Gruner Office of Alumni Relations GCU Today Magazine Catherine Brubaker is a two-time traumatic brain-injury survivor who has taken life by the handlebars. In 2010, Brubaker was assaulted, leaving her with a brain injury that also affected her heart, necessitating a pacemaker. Upon being discharged from the hospital, she was involved in a head-on collision and sustained a second injury to her brain. Three years after her accident, Brubaker was determined to take her life back. She purchased a recumbent tricycle and met Dan Zimmerman, a stroke survivor who was riding the same model. They realized they were riding for the same purpose — freedom. Zimmerman gave Brubaker his card, and on the back was a U.S. map with a red line from Anacortes, Wash., to Key West, Fla. Zimmerman was doing a cross-country bike ride to raise hope and awareness about cycling’s ability to help brain-injury survivors recover and regain their strength. Brubaker, of Tempe, Ariz., later called Zimmerman. She said, “I’m in. I want to do this ride.” She had six weeks to train and raise $10,000, which she accomplished with Zimmerman’s help and that of the community. Along with four other cyclists, Brubaker completed the […]

GCU introduced a new blended learning format to a number of undergraduate classes during summer 2014 as a way to reinvent 100-level classes to be more engaging and valuable as core degree courses. The format, which combines the best elements of online and traditional classes, has already impacted student learning.

By Janie Magruder GCU Today Magazine There are no tiny patients born too early for their own good, no new mothers wrung out with worry over their babies’ ragged breaths, no nurses rushing to respond to jarring alarms in Marla Booker’s new workplace. In fact, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Sidra Medical and Research Center, which Booker has been hired to help staff and run, isn’t open yet. But there’s still plenty for this Grand Canyon University alumna to do in a place that could not be more different from where she spent her entire adult life, as a wife, mother, nurse and hospital administrator. In November, not 30 days after walking across the GCU Arena stage to accept her diploma for a master’s degree in health care administration, Booker moved 6,600 miles from her longtime home in Connecticut to Qatar, a small, oil-rich nation on the coast of the Persian Gulf. Ending a 25-year career at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, she is helping create a state-of-the-art hospital for women and children in the capital city of Doha. It was a bold move for anyone but especially for someone who, at age 47, never had traveled […]

Photos by Darryl Webb GCU News Bureau GCU welcomed online students and faculty to campus Saturday with a reception and free tickets to the men’s basketball game. In rolling out the purple carpet, the University also feted three exemplary students who gave testimonials during the reception, and it awarded scholarships to the children of one of the students, Jessica Smith.    

Eric Gabriel, one of the online learners who will be honored on campus this weekend, has turned losing his right leg into an opportunity to show others how to attack such a life-changing event. He has done so with humor and no-quit attitude, as demonstrated in this GCU Today story.