Recent News

This weekend marked the fourth time this semester that GCU’s student speech and debate team earned first-place honors at a major collegiate forensics competition. GCU Today has a story with more about the team’s fall successes, capped by multiple Top 5 finishes at events at the Pacific Southwest Collegiate Forensics Association’s Fall Championships Tournament at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., and how it has evolved under the direction of communications instructor Barry Regan.

The first deadline for the Canyon Challenge, the annual competition open to anyone on campus who has a plan for a startup business, is coming up next month. If you have a great idea that you’re dying to take to market, this is a way to test its viability and get considerable cash to jumpstart it.

Jerry Colangelo spoke, for the first time, to a group of graduate students in the Colangelo College of Business on Thursday night, and the session was so vibrant it expanded from the scheduled half-hour to a full 60 minutes. Colangelo regaled the students with stories of his life experiences, and they were so engaged the questions afterward just kept coming.

Story and photos by Cooper Nelson GCU News Bureau Grand Canyon University hosted nearly 50 K-12 school districts across Arizona on Wednesday for the inaugural Lopes Leap to Teach career fair, a networking event for current students and alumni to find jobs at local schools. The career fair is part of a new education initiative announced by the University in October to address the state’s shortage of high-quality teachers by bringing together undergraduate and graduate students needing to complete practicum hours in classrooms with school districts. It also was designed to link College of Education graduates with local schools to fill teaching vacancies. According to an October survey by the Arizona Association of School Administrators and job postings listed on the Arizona Education Employment Board, there were more than 500 open teaching positions statewide. Public, private and charter schools from Gilbert to Chandler and Glendale to Maricopa were represented. Two future career fairs will be held in March and April to bring together May graduates and school officials for positions available in the 2015-16 academic year. Tom Beckett, director of human resources for the Maricopa Unified School District, which was represented at the fair, said it has a handful of vacancies. The event was a good launching point to familiarize GCU students with […]

Grand Canyon University announced that it has partnered with Peoria Unified School District on the new STEM Scholars program. The initiative enables high school juniors and seniors to earn tuition-free college credits, so they have their first year of college completed before they even get to campus. Students in Peoria’s Medical, Engineering and Technology (MET) Professional Academy and Sunrise Mountain High School will be the first offered opportunities for college credit through the district and GCU.

They were talking tech Tuesday afternoon at Howerton Hall in an Honors Symposium hosted by the Colangelo College of Business and Delta Mu Delta, an international business honor society. Students got a clear and consistent message: They need to get up close and personal with tech trends.

Grand Canyon University President and CEO Brian Mueller is among national leaders of universities, businesses and other organizations invited to attend the White House College Opportunity Summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Dec. 4. The conference recognizes educational institutions and other community stakeholders committed to developing college graduates who can put their skills to use in the American workforce. “Grand Canyon is pleased to be part of this national discussion about how to best educate our young people, prepare them for fruitful careers that support Arizona cities and towns, and make college education as accessible as possible to a wide range of students,” Mueller said. Over the past few years, the University has intensified its efforts to ensure that a high-quality, affordable college education is available to all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Nearly 18 months ago, Grand Canyon and the Phoenix Union High School District announced a partnership with Alhambra High School to develop the “Learning Lounge” on the University campus, where college students mentor high school students to assist them in improving their academics and expose them to the vast possibilities of a college education. After just one year, nearly 300 Alhambra students have visited the Learning Lounge […]

GCU has a new deputy director of athletics, and for her it’s a homecoming. Jamie Boggs, who most recently was a top administrator at Georgia State but also spent nearly seven years at Duke, grew up in Phoenix and went to Xavier College Preparatory, not far from campus. She’ll be No. 2 in the athletic department under recently hired Vice President of Athletics Mike Vaught.

More than 130 aspiring doctors, dentists, veterinarians and other GCU future health care professionals toured Midwestern University in Glendale on Thursday and interacted with faculty and students from a range of graduate programs. Through a series of agreements announced this fall, Midwestern set aside 66 seats in a range of its graduate programs — including osteopathic medicine, optometry, physical therapy and cardiovascular perfusion — for GCU students who meet the rigorous requirements for acceptance.

Thursday’s basketball game is Foster Care and Adoption Awareness Night, and that means something special for Ahnjellyka and Angela Duque-Parks. Seven years ago after their adoption by a Phoenix couple, they are freshmen at GCU and want to devote their lives to helping people in need, just as their adoptive parents did.