EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of GCU's history page. All the stories can be found here:
GCU History Page | The GCU story | Grand 'Construction' University | A campus culture like no other | GCU timeline | Then and now | Did you know…? | Brian Mueller and the 'Phoenix 50' | Pioneering online education | Rise of athletics | The next 75 years
No doubt about it, there’s something magical about Grand Canyon University. It’s like a secret everyone on campus knows. Just knows. An exuberance. An unfathomable joy. An open-the-door-for-your-neighbors friendliness. A cannot-be-contained spark. A paint-your-face-purple excitement.
There, we said it.
As others have.
“GCU, as you know, is a special place,” said Dr. Paul Danuser, assistant professor of education and public address announcer, during Midnight Madness 2022, the raucous pep rally to kick off the basketball season. “I’m here at midnight because I LOVE this. I get so much energy from the kids and the alumni who come back who know that this is special.”
Olivia Fierro, then a “Good Morning Arizona” anchor, shared the same sentiment when she covered the exuberance of Welcome Week just two months earlier, as hyped-up students on the Welcome Crew cheered, danced and screamed to welcome new students during Move-In. They hauled boxes to first-time students’ residence halls, moving lightning fast, and despite the Arizona heat, they were perfectly happy about it: “The energy here is really exciting and contagious, and you can tell students feel connected. … It’s a very positive environment,” Fierro said.
Veronika Solovei, a student who escaped war in Ukraine that same year and found her second home at GCU, said it, too.
“I’ve heard from a lot of transfer students that they moved here just because of the community. I completely understand them, because since I’ve been here, I honestly have never felt happier,” Solovei said.
In his 2022 end-of-year message, GCU President Brian Mueller encapsulated the feeling that so many have shared.
“I tell people all the time that if I ask students what most attracts them to GCU, nine out of 10 will say it’s the community atmosphere on campus,” he said. “It’s what the university is known for.”
That vibrant atmosphere pervades the school, and not just at the high-spirited home basketball games.
You see it at Chapel, when 5,000 to 6,000 students voluntarily attend worship service every Monday. An all-student-performer Worship Team churns out inspiring songs in GCU Arena to put the campus in the right faith-filled headspace.
Or when 1,000 students pitch 200 tents on The Quad for Camp Elliott. They dedicate themselves to two, three or four days of living in tents and bonding time in front of GCU Arena to be the first in the door at Midnight Madness, despite perfectly good residence hall rooms to be had. As GCU student Micah Gross said happily in 2019 when he and his friends camped out for the opening of the campus Taco Bell, “You know the saying: That GCU students will camp out for anything.”
That magic happens because GCU is a dry campus, in line with its Christian beliefs. It happens without the typical college fraternities or sororities, since Greek life isn’t part of the spirit at GCU.
Curating that dynamic campus culture didn’t just happen, though these days, that sparkle seems to materialize organically.
Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dean of Students and University Pastor Dr. Tim Griffin said it started with a simple question he asked himself in 2010 after seeing a student hop into his car and drive to his class just a building or two away, something he knew was no way to build community: “How do we create spaces that really encourage being together?”
So began the transition of GCU from a drivable campus to a walkable one. Parking shifted to structures on the perimeter, and students began to talk with one another as they high-stepped it to class.
That move sparked another transition.
The influx of students from Southern California who grew up with skateboards meant GCU would evolve into a skateboard-friendly campus, so much so that several students on this entrepreneurially-focused university have launched skateboard businesses, from Lectric Longboards (now Lectric eBikes) to Lux Longboards (now Lux Manufacturing).
Back then, Griffin said building a sense of community was vital for the survival of GCU.
“We were just a small campus,” he said. “But it had a community feel that was really important, that was kind of a cornerstone to our growth years. We had a dominant population whose students were engaged, and they knew each other, coming from a Christian background, by and large. There was a sense of community, a sense that it was easier to be known.”
Building that atmosphere meant flooding the campus not only at Chapel, Midnight Madness or other arena-sized events, such as Lip Sync, Welcome Week pep rally Lope-a-Palooza or the Ignite worship service, but with small events that lend themselves to community.
Such events include winter social Snow Much Fun, in which students sled on manufactured snow at Canyon Field, or Midnight Breakfast to eat breakfast burritos and connect with friends before finals, or the Canyon Activities Board’s post-Chapel, Mac-and-Cheese Mondays.
“We’ve had to keep the smaller events in place, because that’s where students connect with other students. We can’t just plan on an event for 5,000 people and expect people to develop this sense of community,” said then-Residence Life Director Matt Hopkins, now the Director of Student Conduct, in 2020.
“A lot of our events are specific to what students want and what students’ needs are,” said Tristan John-Jandles, a junior legal studies major from Waterloo, Ontario, who immediately joined the GCU Freshman Class Council when he arrived in 2022 and described his opportunity to plan events and interact with fellow students as “spectacular.”
Raised in a wintry climate, John-Jandles appreciates Snow Much Fun in particular.
These events bolster the festive atmosphere and camaraderie that permeate the campus. It’s the kind of spirit that can’t be achieved without its student leaders.
Their role became very intentional in 2010 when Griffin and his staff developed a model outside of the Office of Residence Life, recruiting students to fill leadership responsibilities across campus in programs, events and other initiatives.
The initial success in finding six students who became leaders, in addition to 25 resident assistants, built a foundation that became a focus of Student Affairs, Griffin said.
The blueprint was still in the preliminary stages but already had caught the attention of an administrator at a Southern California university who wanted to know more about the initiative and possibly replicate it. Griffin’s next step was to expand the student-led leadership plan further.
“We really fanned the flame of the student leadership role, and we’ve expanded it into six of the 10 departments within Student Affairs. We have almost 1,200 student leaders now that are recruited, that apply, then are selected and given a scholarship based upon the level of work that they’ll put into their given positions,” Griffin said.
Those leaders arrive two to four weeks before the start of the fall semester for training in roles that range from Worship Team members to student spiritual leaders, called life leaders, who serve alongside resident assistants in the residence halls. They serve one-year terms for which they can reapply. That means a treasure trove of student leaders and mentors ready to cultivate community culture and campus experiences.
“It’s really built on students leading students and not staff leading programs,” Griffin said. “We must have professional staff to help coach and develop and administrate what the student leaders do. But we really believe that students leading students has been the powerful secret sauce of building community on campus and the kind of culture that we have.”
That kind of bold leadership is evident in the nationally renowned Havocs, perhaps the rowdiest student section in all of college athletics, with zany students sporting purple attire, wacky costumes, painted faces and relentless positive support of the campus’ athletic teams. They curate unbeatable camaraderie and a game day atmosphere that coaches and players have said exceed the hype even of renowned venues such as Cameron Indoor Stadium and Rupp Arena.
Place them in GCU Arena with the rest of the Spirit Team — Cheer, Dance, the Thundering Heard Pep Band and “America’s Favorite Mascot,” Thunder — and they bring to life that Purple Pregame Party, game-day atmosphere that SB Nation called “The Biggest Party in College Basketball.” It’s GCU’s big show of choreographed cheers and routines carefully crafted by students and Spirit Team leaders through the years.
Purple Pregame Party + national Game Day Award-winning Spirit Team + two-time NCAA tournament team = magic.
“When you get into that arena, all of a sudden you’re part of the Havocs and it’s OK to act crazy and wild. It’s abnormal to not be abnormal,” then-Cheer head coach Keegan Hubbard said in 2021.
Added former Havocs president Josh Gillespie, also in 2021, “Once you see the payoff (of all the hard work) and the students engaging, it’s so much fun. You just drink it all in. It’s the coolest thing ever, and I get to be a part of it.”
Students would say the same about another aspect of campus culture: how faith is central to everything on campus and how GCU gives them the opportunity to live out their faith.
John-Jandles, who left his hometown in Canada intent on attending a Christian university, immediately felt comfortable bonding with students from various parts of the United States because of their shared faith.
He has participated in Lopes Go Local, a semiannual event in partnership with Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona in which students rehabilitate homes in the university’s economically challenged neighborhood.
“I definitely do value a university that gives back to the community but also understands the community it’s in, and I think that’s important,” John-Jandles said.
Jackson Godwin, a sophomore entrepreneurship major from Troy, Ohio, expressed how, “There’s just this overwhelming feeling of family at GCU, and that’s across everything. … I tell everyone they should come here.”
Then there are the eateries. Students have 32 on-campus options, from Subway to Habit Burger to Panera Bread to Chick-fil-A, to name a few. Those dining spaces also played a part in building community, Griffin said. They give students pause when considering venturing elsewhere for a meal.
“It became so apparent that students just really loved having multiple options on campus … I think that really created a community, kind of a little city-within-a-city experience on campus,” Griffin said.
“As it turned out, it has been a positive contribution for students to get together in small venues, with small groups of friends and new friends, to eat together, to talk. … I don’t know that it was a part of our strategic plan, but it really did work out well for who we are today.”
Godwin would agree.
“It’s one of the most supportive environments I’ve ever been to,” he said of GCU’s vibrant campus life, enlivened by endless events and by students who share the desire to help one other and make the world a better place. “This school has changed my life.”
