By Jeannette Cruz
GCU News Bureau
A new program aims to develop project management skills by providing Honors College students at Grand Canyon University with hands-on, mentored training experiences in various fields of study.
The Project Management Fellowship, a campus-wide collaboration among colleges, GCU faculty and deans, and the Project Management Club, will equip students with basic project management skills and steps for becoming certified in project management.
The fellowship will accept up to 100 applicants for the six-month period in which students will work under the supervision of their mentors and will be responsible for managing and executing at least 50 project-based hours. Applications are due Saturday, Oct. 1.
Breanna Naegeli, assistant dean at the Honors College, said the collaboration on campus has been “extensive.”
“We want to bring students and faculty together and continue to find opportunities that are meaningful and advantageous for them,” she said. “We have many students seeking to leave their mark at GCU. The fellowship students are ambitious, and dedicated honors students are looking to make an immediate impact on not only GCU-sponsored projects but their local and global communities as well.”
While the fellowship allows students to explore a wide-range list of campus projects, they also can present their own ideas. The new ideas then will be automatically considered to compete for scholarship dollars in the Honors Symposium Showcase, a zero-credit, 10-week program that features research projects related to service, ethics research and leadership.
Freshmen Jordan Montgomery and Anthony Novoa are creating a GCU on-demand food-delivery platform. The idea is to provide student employees, or Lope Runners, with a job opportunity while offering a convenient service to students and faculty and have food delivered within an hour.
Montgomery said she is most excited about the new knowledge and experience: “We are still in the planning phase, so it’s exciting to see where this will go.”
Bianca Boling, a member of the GCU softball team and the Honors College community, attended the Honors symposium last year. For her project, she focused on bringing students from the surrounding community to participate in physical activities on campus. As a continuation of that project, Boling would like to implement a program at a local school that would enable the GCU softball team to bring activities to the students.
Chelsea Evans, a recipient of the fellowship, is also the president of the Project Management Club on campus. She was inspired to apply her project-management skills after learning about it through Paul Waterman, faculty adviser for the club and assistant professor in entrepreneurial studies.
“As I learn more about project management, I understand leadership and teamwork, and I can now increase my personal efficiency,” she said. “In collaboration with the club, this fellowship is really providing Honors students a chance to be a part of something bigger.”
Waterman, who spent more than 30 years in management, said the idea under the fellowship is to ensure impact and success as students execute real-life projects they are passionate about.
“This is going to be one big project, and my aspiration is to have students that can go out into the world and prove that they passed the test and also that they are capable and savvy project leaders,” Waterman said. “If you understand what a project is, you realize that your life is a project, going to college is a project and whether you’re working for the government, as an engineer or a nurse, there is a lot of work that is project-based.”
Contact Jeannette Cruz at (602) 639-6631 or [email protected].
