Story by Mark Heller
Photos by Darryl Webb
GCU News Bureau
The expansion of activities and programs during Grand Canyon University’s Welcome Week was such a success, the early forecast for 2017 hints at building on the events that kicked off the 2016-17 academic year.
In addition to established events such as the Canyon Cooldown and the Ignite ceremony, new activities such as Lope-A-Palooza, LopeVenture and Kickstart all debuted with promising results.
The same held true for the expanded list of socials, including First in the Family, Out of State and Multicultural, and the additional shopping and dining options, such as the Bed, Bath & Beyond and Pepsi tents for on-campus residence hall shopping convenience.
“We plan to do them again,” said Charity Norman, GCU’s new student and family programs manager. “We added a lot this year. In previous years we usually added one thing at a time, which led to higher attendance. This time we offered more varieties of activities than ever before to accommodate more interests.”
With three new six-story apartment residences opening, there were more students than ever who needed to be moved in. But by all accounts, Norman said, the traffic on campus flowed well.
She also hinted at exploring additional activities during the evening for students during next year’s Welcome Week. The goal, she said, is to find the delicate balance between accommodating interests and managing logistics. The goal is to have full-bore student participation to help them “feel at home” without having too many activities overlap.
Since it’s been a few years since students have been surveyed about Welcome Week, Norman said they can expect to see one in the coming days soliciting opinions and suggestions moving forward.
“We did the best planning we could, but it was one of the smoothest,” Norman said of Welcome Week. “Our bread and butter is the events and ‘experience’ for students, and that’ll always be the case.”
Contact Mark Heller at (602) 639-7516 or [email protected]
