Recent News

The new First 72 Experience at GCU keeps freshmen busier than ever meeting new people, enjoying social activities, hanging out on their floors and discovering places on campus. For the students at Juniper Hall, it was a smash hit.

GCU’s cheer and dance teams and its mascot, Thunder, have become nationally recognized for their spirit and skill, and the results in a recent competition in Santa Barbara, Calif., confirmed it. Cheer and dance had their best finishes ever, and Thunder won for the fourth straight year.

The Move-In experience is happy and sad for parents at the same time — they’re thrilled to send off their child to GCU and love the Welcome Week spirit, but they also dread going back to a newly empty nest. “I don’t really know whether to laugh or cry, feel happy or sad,” said one mom.

Of all the facilities on campus in the last year, GCU stadium will be the first one a lot of people notice. But students will reap the benefits of many others.

The business model of Southwest Airlines is just that — a model for how to do business. Its annual ranking among the top companies in the country has become a foregone conclusion, and Colangelo College of Business master’s students got insights into its culture Tuesday from marketing adviser Richard Sweet. He said Southwest emphasizes servant leadership — just like GCU.

A surprising number of students are enrolling in a new Sociology Degree with an Emphasis in Social Work that the College of Humanities and Social Sciences is offering for the this first time this school year. Another exciting change for students is a revised Justice Studies program that includes relationship building and conflict resolution.

By Jeannette Cruz GCU News Bureau New construction projects in Grand Canyon University’s $1 billion expansion continue to transform the campus, and GCU athletes and visitors alike will benefit from the 10 new state-of-the-art sports facilities scheduled to be completed within the next two years. The “GCU 10 in 2” initiative begins Aug. 26 with the opening of 3,000-seat GCU Stadium, which will host GCU athletics and University events. “This is a historic time for our athletic program as we enter the final year of our four-year transition period to Division I athletics,” said Mike Vaught, vice president of athletics. “We want to be Top 25 in everything that we do, and these incredible facilities will help us continue to compete at the highest level and strive for excellence both academically and athletically. I can’t think of another university in the country that has embarked on such an ambitious construction project in such a short time frame, but that’s how we do things at GCU.” Men’s soccer coach Schellas Hyndman, who ranks sixth in NCAA history in men’s soccer victories, said GCU Stadium will be “one of the best fields in collegiate soccer.” The stadium, which sits on the west end of campus, has natural grass in […]

Aysha Bell of Career Services has published a book that helps people figure out where their passion lies as they choose a career path. “When you seek positions for the purpose of a paycheck and you really have no fulfillment, you are, in essence, broke,” she writes in “I.D.entifying Your I.D.eal Career.”

Arizona Sen. John McCain was back on campus Thursday, showing once again how much he enjoys visiting GCU. The occasion was a rally in his re-election campaign, and McCain clearly enjoyed speaking to a packed-in audience in the Student Union just as much as University officials valued having him stop by. “He’s very genuine. He’s authentic,” President Brian Mueller said.

Helping others is what GCU is all about, and Denise Krupp, College of Humanities and Social Sciences lead counseling instructor, did just that this summer. She used her skills in motivational interviewing to train two other employee groups over the summer, an enrollment counselor team and student conduct coordinators. One group works with prospective GCU students and the other current students, but both benefit from learning to motivate, not persuade, people to make a change.